This song gets to where I’m going with this songwriting project. To set the scene – the lead character, Eugene Myers, writer, has been dreaming about people who turn out to be real. He’s so desperate for it to happen again, and wants to avoid the fear of a turbulent plane, that he instead starts writing about a person, rather than waiting for a dream to come. He begins,

A New York apartment. I know it’s New York without being told. I can feel it because I’ve lived in a place like this before. Grates on the kitchen windows that look out on the dirtied brick walls between apartment buildings. I had an ex-girlfriend who lived in a place like this. Almost exactly the same….

I understand what is happening in this room. I’ve been around junkies enough in my life. Done it myself. The pride in their wide eyes, as if they’re accomplishing something. Which they are, partly, but what you learn from dope you learn quickly and the rest is redundant. I don’t know where they are in the process, probably somewhere near the beginning. They’re still healthy-looking, not pallid, still excited as they snort, don’t shoot, another line….

She’s a junkie model named Dominique…who actually turns out to exist. So he goes to meet her in New York where she says to him,

“Part of the reason I trusted you is because I feel like I’ve seen you before. In a dream, maybe. I’m just crazy enough to not think that’s crazy. It’s a big universe out there and in here.” She touched her temple. “And there’s a lot more than we can see with our senses. It’s why I started doing dope, you know? To feel God. Because I can’t feel it otherwise. But I know it’s out there. I know it.”

So…the lyrics reflect this:

There might not come a day when I meet the God who made my soul
So I’ll buy it for a song
And like the human race I don’t want to be a waste of love
So I’ll breathe it all day long

Chorus: Models breathe through shallow lips
Making love into made-up faces
Horses breed through shallow hips
Giving birth to made-up embraces
Models breathe through shallow lips, whoa!
—
I think I’ve covered the range of heroin-related animals in this song. Except monkeys – but “Monkeys flinging their own shit” wasn’t quite poetic enough.

Full lyrics here. Song here:

Shallow Lips by Ash Tree

mp3 link: Shallow Lips

Posted on November 18, 2009 at 2:28 pm
http://www.theamericanbookofthedead.com/2009/11/18/chapter-7-number-3-dream/
Categorized under: Soundtrack
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