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Silver Eyelashes

from David Poe by David Poe

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about

"Humor in song is a true weapon. Our fear of torture-by-melody starts on the playground, with the classic "nyah nyah, nyah nyah nyah" and it's derivations.

T-Bone Burnett, who produced the track, knew this one was a joke and cackled with glee the darker it got. I always loved him for appreciating my attempts at writing funny songs -- whether it was "You're The Bomb" or the one that starts "if I saw you laying bloody in the street, I wouldn't bother you."

"This song is one long, obsessive, mean, demented stab at hurtful humor: one part hillbilly logic, one part arty.

"The idea that if the one you loved wouldn't have you, you wouldn't allow anyone else to have her: hillbilly.

"The arty part came from the work of my photographer friend Karen Quiepo (pronounced K-poe, like the thing guitarists put on the neck of the instrument to change keys.)

"Like me, Karen was an employee at CB's Gallery next door to CBGB in the Bowery who was an artist and had other things she wanted to do with her life besides work in a bar. She developed a wondrous photographic process she called light painting, where she would set people up on a sort of magical-looking set, dressed like mermaids and mythological gods and fairy tale stars, then turn out the lights, open the shutter of her camera for a long time and "paint" people with a flashlight. Her subjects had to remain very still. The pictures came out very dreamlike, random, literally painted with light, and quite beautiful.

"I confess to being fascinated with the pictures not only for their inherently romantic quality, but because many of my female friends and co-workers had posed for Karen, sometimes not wearing much. A girl I knew posed twice for her -- first as a mermaid, surrounded by starfish, then as a sort of forest philosopher wearing impossibly long, silver eyelashes.

"I finished writing this song at a lake house owned by my friend Matt Machaffie. Matt is a true music afficianado who has had various gigs in showbiz, and one of them was installing these computerized musical kiosks in record stores and malls. He had to set them up and activate them. He let me hang out for a few days at his lake house, where I wrote songs and drank coffee and canoed. Once he came back from work, I asked him how his day went and he replied "the robots worked today." So I wrote that down.

"Words in music take on different meaning depending on how they're sung, what chord underlies them, the context of listening. But those images from this song -- the mermaid, robots, the silver eyelashes themselves -- are lifted directly from the real world, or at least from the whimsy of friends. I just wrote what I saw.

"When we recorded Silver Eyelashes at The Magic Shop, we did two takes of bass, drums, and acoustic and classical guitars with different microphone placements, and it was decided to cut the two different-sounding versions together. People were using computers to record in 1996, but we weren't -- my first record was made on magnetic, 24-track tape (and I still use it whenever I can.) The engineer, Susan Rogers, took a razor blade to the two corresponding pieces of tape and adjoined them seamlessly, creating a strange shift of worlds in the second verse that I still hear, even after we overdubbed the strings with a small group of string players through arranger Suzie Katayama (who Susan knew from the Prince record Around The World In A Day.)

"In concert, this song gave me a read on an audience: Some laughed, some shrieked, some scoffed, some got bored and talked all the way through. After awhile, I stopped playing this song live, even with a smile on my face. Certain listeners seemed to take an unhealthy notice of its barbarism, making me conscious of what I was putting out there, and I didn't like it. Like I said, it's a funny song, but it's mean."

-David Poe, from Performing Songwriter [04/19/00]

lyrics

SILVER EYELASHES
By David Poe. Copyright 1997 Charming Martyr (BMI)

This is the beginning of a song about the end of our lives
Honey, don't get me wrong when I say
I hope you die soon
I hope you live hard
I hope it's dark now in your room
I hope your heart becomes stone
I hope it's heavy
I hope it feels like you died, and then you do

If I can't have you, I don't want anyone else to

Robot works good today, you can self-medicate
You can swim the sea without the waves
I can't believe your silver eyelashes
I can't believe how the mermaid fades
I know you hide your love away
Somewhere inside your perfect body

You're not alive, you're just alone
I hope you die slow on shiny lies he made you believe
And then he leaves, he leaves, he leaves
And you have nothing left except to come back to me

Do you feel anything?
Do you feel feel anything yet?
I only want my hands around your neck
Your sweet sweet breath when you drink all night and sleep like the dead

I hope I die soon
I'm so numb it wouldn't hurt
And you're just waiting like a landmark to get saved
And my heart's already stopped beating
And I've loved you in the most pathetic ways

But if I can't have you, I don't want anyone else to

credits

from David Poe, released September 15, 1997
David Poe, voice & guitar
John Abbey, bass
Marc Ribot, guitar

license

all rights reserved

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about

David Poe Los Angeles, California

"DAVID POE gives the singer-songwriter genre a much-needed jolt"
- Rolling Stone 

"The make-out record of the year”
-Harp magazine

"The major domo of songwriters"
-Village Voice

"The perfect man"
-Time Out! New York

"[Songs] like miniature novels."
- The London Independent

Composer fellow
- Sundance Institute 2009

Winner
- Lunas del Auditorio award 2011

Sundance Film Festival 2008 - 11
... more

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