Songs (copyright Keith Osterberg, East Mountain Music)
Disney Girl
I first saw you back in grade school, you were in a magazine.
I remember thinking you were so cool, dancing on my TV screen.
You were everything I thought that a girl should be.
You were half a world away but I knew I had to have you next to me.
Troubled angel in a page boy, dancing in the space between.
When you sang it gave me such joy, and ooh you meant the world to me.
Bought a heart-shaped locket. Mailed it off to L.A.
Hoped that little locket would say all the things I could not say, and ...
(chorus)
Ooh, Disney Girl, I gave my lonely heart to you, and ...
Ooh, Disney Girl, a schoolboy crush of velvet blue, but I knew
I was not part of your world. You were just my Disney Girl.
Years rolled by just like a freight train and carried you away from me.
But still inside I held the sweet pain, and just a little curiousity.
Where'd you land, I wondered, when the big deal went down,
Caught in the rolling thunder, or maybe living in a small dead town?
Heard you got a shot at redemption playing in the roots rock scene.
Heard you sounded like Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny in a time machine.
Got a ticket and I managed to see your show.
Little girl no longer, but you still took me where I want to go, and...
(chorus)
(bridge) I waited after the show so we could talk about the old times.
Where did they go? Gone with the rain and the sunshine.
When they finally turned the lights down, bartender said "last call",
You were packing for the next town, and I was headed for a fall.
Felt my heart stop when you came over to talk for awhile.
Don't remember what I said, girl, I just remember that it made you smile.
Guess those Disney days are gone now, the freckles and the schoolboy days.
We both have children of our own now. Wouldn't have it any other way.
But when I'm feeling like my world has come tumbling down,
I hear your voice again and I feel my feet lifting off the ground.
(chorus)
Funny Thing About Love
I set a place for one. There’ve been times I’ve slipped and set it for two.
And when the meal is done, I pour myself a drink. I pour another one.
She’d laugh to see the house this way I think,
Sheets torn off the bed and dishes in the sink.
I think I’ll make it now, it’s just a weekend like the one before.
Another log on the fire; it’s never warm enough in here anymore.
Tell me why, when I look into her face,
Why do I hear your voice, feel your warm enbrace?
(CHORUS)
That’s the funny thing about love, once you lose it, it can hurt forever.
That’s the funny thing about love, sometimes it’s not funny at all.
She asks if something’s wrong. I tell her “no” while holding back a tear.
And as she speaks to me, I hear her words but it’s your voice I hear.
And I try to stop the hurting in my soul.
Oh, is there balm in Gilead that can make the wounded whole.
She asks about my day, and in my mind I’m drifting back two years.
I don’t know what to say. My days are meaningless without you here.
And my nights, a pain I hope she never sees.
And I wonder if she knows what you meant to me.
(CHORUS)
(BRIDGE)
And sometimes when the pain is too much,
I can sit by the fire, I can read by the light,
And sometimes, when the embers have died,
I can see you there in the night.
(CHORUS)
She takes my hand in hers.
She tells me “smile” but I’ve forgotten how.
She’s ten years old today.
She looks so much like her mother now.
And I’ve tried but I’ve never understood
How a love as wrong as ours made a child so good.
(CHORUS)
Shards of Glass
It was a dream, at least he thought it was a dream,
Held somewhere in his fevered sleep.
It seemed so right, she walked in beauty like the night,
Like a promise he could never keep.
And in her eyes he couldn't help but see
All the things he could but would never be,
The opalescence of a swan in flight,
And shards of glass in the moonlight.
It was a prayer, at least to her it was a prayer,
Offered up in fear of answering.
She saw in him a kind of life that might have been,
Like the consort of a poet king.
And in his arms she couldn't help but find
The danger shining bright and crystalline.
The fragile hope that she could make it right,
And shards of glass in the moonlight.
(chorus)
The distillation of all our prayers and dreams,
We keep them bottled up inside.
We pour it out like water, or we drink it to the lees,
Toss the empties, discard the empties.
She went to mass, he watched the seasons come and pass,
Like the cooling of his fevered brow.
He lost his way through all the things she tried to say,
He'd never be returning now.
And in their hearts they couldn't help but feel
The wounds they gave each other start to heal.
They won the battle but they lost the fight
To shards of glass in the moonlight.
And so it goes, the summer heat, the winter snows,
And autumn is the cruelest part.
And in the spring, we grow a brand new pair of wings.
It's the healing of the human heart.
And in our hearts we're always going to find
The danger shining bright and crystalline,
And we'll walk barefoot through the darkest night
And shards of glass in the moonlight.
Some Other Place to Be
Given to extremes, Lost in inbetweens,
‘ Tween the darkness and the light,
See the world in black and white,
No shades of grey.
The core begins to cool. Play the cynic or the fool.
Told myself I didn't care, In my head I wasn't there.
I was high in the mountains, deep in the jungle, sailing the open sea.
Some other place to be, when you're not here with me.
Totaled up the loss, Tried to count the cost,
When the center doesn't hold,
When the pilgim's tale is told, You walk away.
Never had the chance in the twisted circle dance,
But I held you for a time in the ageless, endless rhyme.
It was something I dreamed of,
Something I prayed for, Something I hoped you'd see.
Some other place to be, when you're not here with me.
(bridge)
Lesson learned... Time to move on,
Pages turned... Why don't you move on?
Bridges burned... She doesn't want to be seen with somebody
who fits the description of me.
Still, the hour is come,
Casting circles 'round the sun,
Time to settle up the score,
Measure out who hurt whom more,
Pain by degrees.
Flowers in the book, pressed inside but never looked.
Never took the chance to say words that failed me anyway.
You can live in the moment, frozen in amber,
Or pass on eternity.
Some other place to be, where you're not here with me.
Innuendo Dance
"Here comes trouble," you said,
as I walked across the floor to you.
You were on the wrong side of town.
Saw you and knew what I had to do.
Get you out on the dance floor,
with the music playing hot and slow,
So I slipped a five to the guitar man
and I got between you and the door.
(chorus)
And so we danced in innuendo,
and we lied so gracefully.
Pretend the bluff was close enough
To whatever love's supposed to be.
But that's how it goes when you dance in innuendo.
I never thought a girl like you
Had any use for a guy like me.
But you didn't want to be alone,
And I wasn't going to let you be.
It was a beautiful deception,
Taken in a moment of need,
So we said the things that we wanted to hear,
and believed what we had to believe.
(chorus)
All your friends said you were too good for me,
And baby all my friends agreed.
You hear that stuff for long enough,
After a while you're going to believe.
I can't blame you darling, and I sure won't blame myself.
You build a house on sinking sand,
Or you leave it sitting up on the shelf.
(chorus)
Someone Else's Star
Charlie Chaplin's on vacation - hotel room in Nice -
He's looking through the paper and he comes across this piece.
It seems the local movie house is having a film fest
and that very day a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
Charlie, he gets curious about a thing like that,
So he opens up his steamer trunk and he gets his bowler hat.
He pulls on the baggy pants and gets mustachioed
He's going off to find himself at the local movie show.
(Chorus)
And it's Modern Times and City Lights.
The Pilgrim and the Kid.
It doesn't matter what they say, Or what they think you did.
You're traveling incognito But that ain't who you are.
You're self-defined and satisfied, Not someone else's star.
You're self-defined and satisfied, Not someone else's star.
Charlie finds the theatre and signs a pseudonym
And stands there with a dozen tramps that all look just like him.
This one has the shuffle down, and that one has the cane.
And not a one knows Charlie's there to see what he became.
Finally it comes to this...Charlie gets his chance.
A brilliant, flawless reprise of the fork and bread roll dance.
It's subtle and it's nuanced, it's graceful and absurd.
And when the judging's over Charlie Chaplin comes in third.
(chorus)
Life's a crazy circus and most of us are clowns,
The chaos and conformity of images and sounds.
An enigmatic pantomime performed for passersby.
We laugh at human frailty 'cause we're too ashamed to cry.
So next time that they tell you that you don't make the grade, That you don't measure up to definitions that they've made,
You can smile and tip your hat and leave without a word. They've missed the point of who you are,
You're Charlie, come in third.
