The Almost Poet
"An eventual early riser, she's prone to oversleep / Loves new technology, but hates the feature creep."
A sort of new, sort of old one — finished this week.
The title and most of the lyrics are from 2014. (I had a very productive writing spell in a cafe during the World Cup that summer.)1 Last fall, I was working on a completely different version that I thought was the one, until I realised the lyrics wouldn’t quite fit. I started this version in January.
It’s a song about the chaos, quirks, and contradictions of an ordinary life. The shambolic joys and the transcendent mundanities. It’s a story about the ways we lie to ourselves and the weird things we care about and the parts of ourselves other people never get to see.
Appropriately then, the music is a joyful cacophony! I sketched out the basic arrangement with an acoustic guitar, some drums, a bass line, and the lead vocals. Everything added after that was an improvised first take. All the guitars, keys, synths, and backing vocals were just whatever came out when I hit record. A song about the messiness of life that incorporates the messiness of life.
Some people might take issue with the particular phrasing of “foreign amputee” — perhaps you read it as crude and dehumanizing — but a song is not an argument about how to be good or what you should do. And this song is about a character. Life is full of well-meaning people who are perhaps clumsy and ignorant in other ways. And that’s alright.
She is the almost poet, Whose skyscrapers are European, Who redwoods are daisies, Who discovered art at the Keswick Museum. She is the almost poet, A connoisseur of seven curries, Her heroes played at left-back, She's read everything on Arthur Murray. She is the almost poet, Whose Hollywood is BBC TV, Whose body is a parish church, Who sends money to a foreign amputee. She is the almost poet, Spends money like a vagabond, Whose great lakes are chilly ponds, Who pronounces it croissants. She is the almost poet, Whose bank statements are always black, Whose brittle bones need calcium, Who did not support the invasion of Iraq. She is the almost poet, Who found attic shapes in willow pattern plates, Who, though she never said it, Is proud of what she wanted to create. She says her pint’s a shandy, so she doesn’t fall asleep, And she likes to smoke socially, on average twice a week. An eventual early riser, she's prone to oversleep, Loves new technology, but hates the feature creep. Who every morning cursed the world, Or that part of it she knew. Who liked finding bark on a wet black bough, And hated fascists — that means you, Ezra Pound.
Writing this post prompted me to see if I could find other, older versions of the lyrics, and I found this unused verse which I quite like:
“She is the almost poet / Whose savannah is the supermarket car park / Who's read almost everything on hypnosis / Who collects photos of abstract art.”
Good one Steve!