Bright Eyes Waste Of Paint Lyrics

Waste Of Paint Lyrics

I have a friend, he’s mostly made of pain
He wakes up, drives to work
and straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of
paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
And I tried
to tell him that he had a sense
Of color and composition so
magnificent
And he said thank you, please, but your flattery
It is truly
not becoming me
Your eyes are poor, you’re blind, you see
No beauty
ever could have come from me
I’m a waste
Of breath, of space, of
time

I knew a woman she was dignified and true
Her love for her man
was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had
lied
And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a
lie
She was grateful for everything that had happened
And she was anxious
for all that would come next
But then she wept, what did you expect
In
that big old house with the cars she kept
Such is life, she often
said
With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your
death
Which was fine with her, she never got upset
And with all the days
she may have left
She would never clean another mess
Or fold his shirts,
or look her best
She was free
To waste away alone

Last night my
brother, he got drunk and drove
And this cop, he pulled him off to the side
of the road
And he said officer, officer, you’ve got the wrong
man
No, no, I’m a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you
don’t understand
The cop said No one got hurt, you should be
thankful
And your carelessness, it is something awful
And no I
can’t just let you go
And though your father’s name is
known
Your decisions now are yours alone
You’re nothing but a
stepping stone on a path
To debt, to loss, to shame

The last few
months I’ve been living with this couple
Yeah, you know the kind who
buy everything in doubles
Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle
I love
their love and I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that
was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us
And still to me
I’m sick, lonely
No laurel tree, just green envy
Will my number
come up eventually
Like love’s some kind of lottery
Where you
scratch and see what’s underneath
It’s sorry
Just one
cherry
I’ll play again, get lucky

So now I hang out down by the
train's depot
No, I don’t ride, I just sit and watch the people
there
They remind me of wind-up cars in motion
They way they spin and
turn and jockey for positions
And I wanna scream out that it all is
nonsense
Their life’s one track and can’t they see it’s
pointless?
But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and
suddenly
It’s clear to see, it’s not them, but me
Who’s
lost my self-identity
And I hide behind these books I read
While
scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal
ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a
sketch of me
And everything I’ve made is trite and cheap and a
waste
Of paint
Of tape
Of time

So I park my car down by the
cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice
is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping
off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend they sound like
angels
I hope there’s some room still in the middle
But when lift
my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high way up in heaven
So I
hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to
just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent god
And I have no
faith but it’s all I want
To be loved
And believe
In my soul, in
my soul