Leavin' Here
(B. Mosley)
appears on Light & Blood
I was itching to get out of NYC and tour…the city’s grit was waning rapidly…9-11 had changed everything…made it shallower and dumber and more & more a bastion of privilege with every passing second. Rents were skyrocketing. Gentrification was voracious. Real people were having to move further & further into the outer boroughs. It broke my heart.
My partner at the time & I were visiting her parents in North Carolina. They lived out in the country and had a nice, big swimming pool, where I sat in the moonlight to write this song.
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Living in the city, no tree no sky
Oh my word ain’t heard
No crickets in the a long while
The concrete island and the plastic style
Hey, there’s another pair of
Over-loved and under-pitied hipsters
I believe that’s Miss and Mister Shitty disposition
I’d be wishing they believed in anything at all
Leavin’ here to be gone away, far away is too near
Yesterday ain’t soon enough
Breathin’ easy in the free clean breeze
Land sakes, the cloth that I am cut from
Young, dumb, hip middle-class white people by the buttload
Yuppies piled in faster than the towers imploded
Now it’s all been polished up and dolled up and
Sold for the zombie fops to shop in who can’t afford hello no more…no howdy-do
Their so faux cool, they rule
Up in the greatest town on earth
Where I found there’s a dirth of anything
Vaguely resembling greatness, considering
Greatness is a mountain Greatness is a sea, The Unstruck Sound, The Oneness
Man, greatness can’t be pounded out of the pavement
Greatness ain’t made, it ain’t even found
It finds you and shines through
Leavin’ here to be gone away, far away is too near
Yesterday ain’t soon enough
Breathin’ easy in the free clean breeze
Land sakes, the cloth that I am cut from
Ya’ll can get on after it, I give you my blessing
I’m guessing that I can’t be stressing over this here mess no more
Gonna stoke my sould in the moonlight, gonna practice what I preach
The sun and cactus gonna teach me…and I remember who I am
Leavin’ here to be gone away, far away is too near
Yesterday ain’t soon enough
Breathin’ easy in the free clean breeze
Land sakes, the cloth that I am cut from