Janie Barnett—lyrics

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america in my mind
belong
blue horizon
the face you wear
fly
for what it's worth
home with me
impossible to stay
letter to a friend
living in god's hands
looking for you
moment in time
near so far
nothing like that time
reclaim your life
the ride
shake the ladder
simone
somebody holds me down
straight line to heaven
where is the heart

america in my mind

How did I get here?
Nobody knows my voice
Nobody hears me
I haven't a single choice
My brother who brought me and my husband
they work the land
God's country they say
Herdin' them woollies ever' damn day
It's just not the way I saw America in my mind

Winter layer upon layer upon layer of
white and freeze
September to April like the rings
of an ancient tree
My husband looks right through me with his eyes
he embraces his land
They said I would blossom and fill
but I turn inward 'gainst this Dakota chill
The touch of his hand can ne'er still that
America in my mind

America in my mind
sweet honeysuckle straight off the vine
sweet honeysuckle
Song of the hummingbird
and the gold at the end of the train line
America was bonnie in my mind

Ay, there's a sun now
I could be brave and clever
I'll not see Scotland again
The snow's done buried that forever
I used to look back but my neck
it can't take anymore
Some of us can rise in defeat
He thrives on the struggle but I just retreat
He's never had a taste of the sweet
America in my mind

(refrain)

Sometimes he loves me he looks inside
He sees in me his homeland
and he touches that pride
We rock in the cradle of what could be
and for a minute he can reach me

belong

There is no straight line get you go to heaven
There are so many winding paths
There is every kind of glory
And every kind of messy mistake
I know, I know, baby I know

There's no money, no fame gonna get you to heaven
Find a friend, sit down, laugh
Try to love the work you do
And little conversations you make
I know, I know, baby I know

Belong, belong, to every word you say now
Belong, belong, every kernel of the day now
Belong, belong, every word you say now

There is no straight line gonna get you to heaven
So take some time, try to find heaven right here
Try to stand by your girl, and listen to the wisdom in her soul
Cause she knows, she knows, baby she knows

Belong, belong....

blue horizon

I wanna meet you out on the blue horizon
I wanna take you somewhere where they can't see

Standing on the tarmac waiting on a plane
On a flat and blackened Sunday in a cold and lonely rain
Then I touch you through the window
I'm looking for a loophole
See your baggage loaded and in minutes you'll fly away
Couldn't we stop time baby
Grease the squeaky wheels, conquer it maybe

I wanna meet you out on the blue horizon
I wanna take you somewhere where they can't see
I wanna love you out on the blue horizon
Come come come
Come away with me

Let's fly beyond reason, defy the odds with me
I'll steal you from the real world, gonna set you free
Then I'll stop the earth turning, fold you to my heart
Defy the force of gravity, we'll never be apart
Live forever, grease the wheels
Just be together

I wanna meet you out on the blue horizon...

back to top

the face you wear

I think you think that I think we understand us
I just wanted to tell you it's not that way
If you don't speak from your heart I will not know you
If you don't ask from your heart I just won't say

I guess you'll say now it's late in the game for talking
You might expect that I'd known for sure you cared
To act accordingly does not mean you're home free
To be appropriate does not mean you've shared

I'm just saying
what I've never said before
I'm just trying
my foot stuck in a closing door

Where do you go when you go to that place?
who is the man hiding behind that face you wear?
the face you wear
the face you wear

I walk in circles you wonder what's my problem
I'm washing dishes I'm breaking every glass
What am I looking for a moment a message or some reaction
I want to tell you something want to tell you got to tell you fast

I'm just saying
what I've never said before
I'm just trying
my foot stuck in a closing door

Where do you go when you go to that place?
who is the man hiding behind that face you wear?
the face you wear
the face you wear

fly

Climb out the window to the wide horizon
It's a big big sky
Etch out a runway for your great departure
Spread your wings and fly

You're on a mission now to study the planet
One piece of life at a time
Don't be afraid cause it's a mighty adventure
Spread your wings and fly

When you fly away
Got to leave your baby days behind
Take your heart and take this chart I made you anyway
You'll be fine
I know you'll be fine

Climb out the window to the wide horizon
Mighty clouds of desire
Baby be fearless, be careful, be fearless
Spread your wings and fly

I love you darling with a passion of ages
I'd love to keep you mine
But I've got to send you out to study the planet
One piece of life at a time

Spread your wings and fly

for what it's worth

Sometimes the world is flat
You fall off the edge and slide
Deep black space'll call you to the other side
Sometimes the world is small
Just a circle around you
Baby stay close to me my darling
Because I've found you, I've found you

Sometimes you feel forever
Life can look that long
One great ride before you, you can do no wrong
Some nights you wake in panic
Time's a speeding train
Baby you'll walk until you drop trying to shake off that pain

But sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Sometimes the work's so easy it doesn't feel like work
Sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Baby I'm gonna be there with you
For what it's worth.

I'm gonna take you riding
I'm gonna kiss your heart
I'm gonna give you reasons from the very start
You'll never ache for something
Something you've never known
Baby cause I will take you out there to the wonder zone

Sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Sometimes the work's so easy it doesn't feel like work
Sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Baby now I'm gonna be there with you
For what it's worth.

In a big gray barn in a great green field there was a pink pig learning to squeal. There was a great big horse and a very little horse and on every barn is a weather vane, of course, a golden flying horse...*

Sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Sometimes the work's so easy it doesn't feel like work
Sometimes it seems so simple to love your time on earth
Baby I'm gonna be there with you
For what it's worth.

*from The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

home with me

Down in Olde Towne
There's a back street where my feet are free to run
There's a backyard
and a mailbox with my name written upon it
How the world has grown so large
and leans so heavy on us
I wanna go back to where I never feel this
homeless

Grasses greener
Grasses turning into gray cemented lobbies
You and I baby
Hearts and bones turning to steel
magnetic bodies
Taller buildings living breathing thoughts
turn into concrete
I wanna go back to where I trust the ground
beneath my feet
Trust the ground beneath my feet

Come on and go
Home with me
Home is where your heart is open
Home will be closer to the sky
Home with me
There's something more like living waiting inside

I'm alive there
No resentments no remains no battle scars
Such a clear air
Nobody has to win or lose or draw fire there
One way or another I will take you
when I go there
You're gonna see what I see
You're gonna know what I know there
You're gonna know what I know there

Come on and go
Home with me
Home is where your heart is open
Home will be closer to the sky
Home with me
There's something more like living waiting inside

impossible to stay

Nine thirty, all is well
Night is singing, night is singing
Nine forty, love is limber
Somebody wants somebody
Ten thirty love's beleaguered
How can it turn so mean so quickly
So many things you want that you can't have

Now you make it impossible, impossible to stay
You make it impossible, impossible to stay
You doing everything you can to push good love away
You make it impossible, impossible to stay

Lovers living in a natural state
Share the sorrows, share the joys
Lovers living in a state of siege
Needing constant feeding, getting constant noise
You want your video feedback
I want my peace and calm
So many things we want that we can't have

Now you make it impossible, impossible to stay
You make it impossible, impossible to stay
You know I'm doing everything you can to push good love away
You make it impossible, impossible to stay

Come meet me, come meet me halfway
Don't make me, don't let me pay alone for our mistakes
Come meet me, meet me where right or wrong no longer matters
Don't you know what matters?

No you make it impossible, impossible to stay
You make it impossible, impossible to stay
You know I'm doing everything you can to push good love away
You make it impossible, impossible to stay

letter to a friend

I decided to be happy every single day
Though some times I hide it cause I feel guilty in a way
My contemporaries with their sadly planted seeds
Habits of a lifetime growing into wild weeds

I've surely had my share and I always seem to write it down
Single-minded desperation, the built-up getting broken down
But these days I maneuver through it all with some success
I got tired of all the talk and always cleaning up the mess

I still live inside my head at a least a quarter of the day
See, that's where I find those bits that keep me looking at the ways
We speak and feel and do and get our silly bodies through

So now I ride the F to West Fourth and I
Prowl the streets for news
And I study every face, I love to confiscate their stories
And I eat up every trace of their missions and their glories
And their habits of a lifetime because it's just what I do

Never be a white-washer, some Mary Tyler Moore
But sometimes out of darkness does come light
Cause it's really quite amazing to me
After all the junk we've been through
People still attempt to get it right

Wouldn't I give a thing or two to have what you have now
All that lovely fame and money folly
Wouldn't you give a thing or two to have what I have now
I don't ever wonder what to call me
I would have your freedom to enchant the world with song
Carve my name upon some patch of earth
You would have my center which is wide deep and long
And you would have the miracle of birth

I've decided to be happy every single day
Doesn't always work but it's the willing that's the way
I look for all the new ways I could maybe change the world
Now girlfriend you must look for ways to find that little girl
She's living there inside you, she's the one who'll be your friend
And I'll meet you on the F train as we travel up and back this life again.

living in god's hands

My feet burn hot from the weight of the sun
Humidity blooms like the buds
on the old Magnolia
In the south there's a chip on the shoulder
of everyone
How do you move when you're
too tired to stand?
How do you fight for your home when you're a
stranger in your own land?
My faith's about gone but I feel like
I'm living in God's hands
living in God's hands
living in God's hands

God made the rivers and he made the streams
They say he witnessed the drownings and he heard the screams
Tell me did he teach us to hate and disown
or is that just something we picked up
on our own?

God raised this roof so someone
could burn it down
God went and planted that cotton so they'd kill
for the ground
And he made a man willing to scream so we'd get
used to the sound
How do we lay down the angry young man?
How to forget your whole life and the lives that
went beforehand?
I hear Gabriel's horn and he's saying
"Now you're living in God's hands"
living in God's hands
living in God's hands

looking for you

All along the river lovers like thieves
Stealing human comfort, crawling through the darkness
The wind through the leaves

Rolling into midnight, Roll into the dawn
We were like the lovers they commemorate in song

I can still remember every single kiss
Passion without end but it's the friendship I miss
If I could only know you like that again

What happened on the road to perfect love
What happened on the way to the heaven that I dreamed of
I'm waiting, walking, I'm looking for a clue
I'm looking for you
I'm looking for you
Baby baby baby I'm looking for you

I don't want to lose you to the crimes of your life
And I don't want my passion, all my intuition going under the knife
Baby listen to me, you know life is not that long
Redefine this love before it's gone

Do you want to suffer?
What's the living for?
Will you fight forever in your private little war
Will you fight me forever?

Chorus

I can still remember what it was you said
Swirling like a comet leaving traces in my head
You said I will be your, I will be your, I will be your footprints in the dew
Now baby I'm looking for you
I'm waiting, walking, I'm looking for a clue
I'm looking for you

Chorus

moment in time

I remember clay-digging fingernails on the banks of Duchess pond
I remember wide poison ivy trails leading up to your mama's lawn
And the neon lights from the fast food joints on the highway down below
How we stood so still watching angels sail
Then you laid down beneath my soul
I linger in that moment, digging deeper into earth
It was a one brief shining moment when I knew what it all was worth

One brief shining moment in time
One shining time
One perfect rhyme
One perfect song
A moment in time
One shining time
One perfect dream that you're a part of some design
For one brief moment in time

I remember time by the smell you wore coming off your midnight skin
I remember lying by the phonograph while we watched Miles Davis spin
How we cared so much and we knew so much
So much more than we know now
How we drew our lives with a fine-point pen knowing
where and when and how

I linger in that moment, barricading against time
It was one brief shining moment I believed the world was mine

chorus

near so far

Just tell me what you want from me
Don't test me, don't take me
Just tell me
Don't make me bend until I break

I'm hoping it's not out of reach now
A solution, a design
A way in or out, some sign that we can meet in the middle

Oh oh oh, can you hear me, out here in there
Oh, oh, oh, can you see we're so far so near
Tryin' to get clear
So near so far

I step into the evening starlight
I look for you, you look through me
I want to find you
You might lose me
Somewhere in this town

Main street, I try to follow you down
I call you baby, turn slowly
I think maybe you might know me way beyond your pain

Oh oh oh, can you hear me, out here in there
Oh, oh, oh, can you see we're so far so near
Oh oh oh, can you hear me, out here in there
Oh, oh, oh, can you see we're so far so near
Tryin' to get near, so near so far

If we could just float into meaning
Touch down here and there...

Baby come a little nearer

nothing like that time

I remember the feeling in the air
I remember the light
There's nothing like that first long look
There's nothing like that time

I remember the feeling in your voice
Your face leaning into mine
There's nothing like that first long look
There's nothing like that time

And when I climb the steps up to the attic in my mind
It's filmy gray and static but I can feel an old life hover
And I think that it's still there
And I smell the English rain, I see you smiling in a chair
Looks so fine
There's nothing like that time

Late September when all the air is new
Steel blue wind across the sky
And when the new year comes
I sometimes think of you
Cause there's nothing like that time
Then I remember and oh I want you back
And I want you when the winter shines
Cause there's nothing like the way it was back then
No, no, no nothing like that time
There was nothing like that, nothing like that, nothing like that time

reclaim your life

Money got wings to fly over yonder
Money got power to kill
Money got a runner around every corner
and a hold on the people's will
Fear is the monkey on the back of the nation
and money is that fear in your hand
But deep in the heart of the mighty mighty nation
when the walls come down

You know you've got to
reclaim your life
you've got to reclaim your life
anyway you can

I haven't got wings to fly over yonder
Just a dollar to ride the train
The roar of the engine the roll of the combustion
the clouding of my brain
And I got a fear like a monkey on my back
but I tell you
it's not gonna slow me down
Cause deep in the heart of the
mighty mighty nation
When the walls come down

You know you've got to
reclaim your life
Reclaim your life
Anyway you can
Reclaim your life

the ride

I work deep into the evening
early morning crouching over the page
I love sleeping...and I love dreaming
but I work deep inside my rocking cage
Every night I quietly wonder what we're living for
and I figure I'll know for sure someday

Waiting for a sign...waiting for a sign
Waiting for a wink in the eye of a stranger
somewhere down the line
Waiting for a sign...even in the dark
If there is a will to create this thing we call life
then there is a spark

If you love me...I'll be able
and at my table you'll be always at home
But honey if you're like me we'll prob'ly
walk this world
in search of hearts and bones
At least we will not be alone
Every day I silently wonder
who controls this ride
Is there someone on the other side?

Waiting for a sign...waiting for a sign
Waiting for a wink in the eye of a stranger
somewhere down tech line
Waiting for a sign...even in the dark
If there is a will to create this thing we call life
then there is a spark

Indian Princess walks on water
and at the alter all she offers are her dreams
And with my hands I paint the big sky
and when I'm done I sew it up at the seams
Every day I wrestle and tumble
but there's one thing I know
what we're doing isn't just for show

Waiting for a sign
Somewhere down the line...

shake the ladder

Reach for the ladder
Step to the ladder
climb climb the ladder

Lights at the end of the runway one more
take-off into the night
Lights in your head switch on
This is your life
Reveille, mail call, war is hell
and the night into battle is now

When you reach for the ladder
step to the ladder
climb climb the ladder
rock the ladder

You're on the air now there's your target
here's your audience
You've got to care what you're doing if you
want it to last
You've got to care what you're saying
we've got no more room for lies

When you reach for the ladder
step to the ladder climb climb the ladder
I want you to rock rock the ladder
shake shake the ladder rock rock the ladder
I want you to shake shake the ladder
rock rock the ladder shake shake the ladder
oh...

Lights at the end of the runway one more
take-off into the night
You've got the power of the mighty mighty
warrior now
Passionate ideals but friends like wheels
turn over and over again

When you reach for the ladder
when you step on the ladder
Even when you climb climb the ladder
climb climb the ladder
Even when you rock rock the ladder
rock rock the ladder

Even when you shake shake the ladder
I want you to wonder who's falling off

Simone

As for us, whatever the case may be, we believe in freedom. Is it true that this belief must lead us to despair? Must we grant this curious paradox that from the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything? On the contrary, it appears to us that by turning toward this freedom we are going to discover a principle of action whose range will be universal.*

Oh, Simone
Standing by the window all alone
Oh, Simone
Didn’t you know?

Mother to none became mother to everyone
Your famous lover became your son
Didn’t you know?
Didn’t you know?

Brilliant and free love and philosophy
I am the daughter who will love you dutifully
I am the daughter through whom you’ll live eternally
Didn’t you know?
Didn’t you know?
Didn’t you know?

Nothing is decided in advance and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win. Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring.*

Your knowledge they called intuition
Your skill they called black ambition
Your will they called keen aggression
Your empathy for the world they called depression

Oh Simone
That kind of woman stands alone
Oh Simone
That kind of woman makes her own home
Didn’t you know
You must have known
We make our own home

If the cause of freedom is not that of others more than it is mine...
If the cause of freedom is not that of others more than it’s mine...*

*from The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone DeBeauvoir

somebody holds me down

The walls have eyes in this city
they can read the in-between
We break the weight of the city
and we drink into a cool dream
But 3am in Piccadilly
the eyes upon us
we'd kill for luck or 50 p.
somebody holds me
somebody holds me down
somebody somebody
somebody holds me

The queen's in bed looking pretty
and she sheds a royal tear
and with what she wears round her sweet neck
we could eat for thirty years
But 3am in Piccadilly
her eyes are closed on my wish to be
anywhere but here
I move my feet but I can't walk clear
somebody holds me
somebody holds me
somebody holds me

Shadows fall over London town
Shadows crawl...

Somebody holds me down...

straight line to heaven

Driving to Charlottesville down old Route 1
98 degrees no air conditioning on
Yellow bird Plymouth roll into town
I wish I had a top so I could put it down

Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?
Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?

Maybe it's fever, but I've an instinct way down deep
Or hallucination, but I see you even in my sleep
Yellow bird Plymouth take me to the one I love
Order me coffee and offer the stars above

Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?
Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?

Yellow moon over the arcade, the
Singing of love-sick cicadas
Follow that scent to your veranda
It had to be like this

Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?
Is it a straight line to get to heaven?
And am I on time, are you still there?

I could be easily happy, just show me a sign
I could be happy just turning back time
Baby don't let me down, don't let me down tonight
Just look at the back roads rolling out of sight
Just look at the back roads rolling out of sight
Baby come on out of sight

where is the heart

Where is the heart? Where is the joy?
Where is the pride of the living?
So many modern toys to deploy
Hearts give way to that noise

Here comes the long arm of law and order
The banker, the microchip
here in my own damn home
my own mind
the tv...the digital chime

So where can the heart go?
during this great siege?
Where can the heart hide in safety?
I can't believe that the things that they tell us
are vital and true
So where can the heart go
when hearts become taboo

Creature to creature machines and man
Good guys can run the trains
and the bad guys can wave the flag
Am I blind?
Is there something of value to see this time?

Of this I'm afraid, of this I am sure
Nobody can think any longer
We all want an instant cure
Easy deals
No words no deeds, nothing to really feel

So where can the heart go
during this great siege?
where can the heart wait in safety?
I can't believe that the things that they tell us
are vital and true
So where can the heart go
when hearts become taboo?