I just returned from two weeks in California, the first week was spent in San Francisco where I was introduced to my new life-changing music group, Algebra Suicide. My dream is to produce a tribute track to this song, one of their larger hits in the 80's, which has intense messages that I relate to - as well as a sober examination of the banality of death when compared to living. Upon returning to beautiful Cleveland, Ohio I could not find the lyrics anywhere online, which saddened me and made the whole tribute-track idea more difficult... So here's my busy-body contribution to global knowledge.
Little Dead Bodies
written by Lydia Tomkiw, music by Don Hedeker
from the album The Secret Like Crazy
How right you are dear Paul,
that we hear of famous people's deaths while on vacation.
Perhaps it's so their funerals are not too crowded,
with their loyal fans being out of town and all.
Those celebrities are pretty clever.
I've heard that someone's born every 8 second,
so I presume that someone dies every 8 seconds just to keep things even.
It makes me feel shortchanged when I read the obituary page,
someone's holding back information.
It also prompts me to flip through the telephone directory on sleepless nights saying
over, and over, and over again - Yep. You're all going, every last one of you.
Wow, Heaven must be a big place.
I don't know too many dead people,
but folks tell me I'm young.
When my grandfather died he was laid out in the Bubb funeral home,
and I was secretly glad Mr. Bubb didn't change his name to something more romantic,
when he went into business.
I just wish it was less memorable.
My highschool locker partner Ned worked part-time for a mortician.
Imagine dressing dead people, straightenening their ties and fluffing up their hair so you can afford to take a girl out to the movies on Saturday night.
Well that's love.
That's, adolescent desperation.
I would have been honored to have Ned take me to the movies and let him buy me popcorn.
Instead, I went out with a boy who died.
The hardest part was knowing that his body didn't just disappear on the bed the moment he left.
I think that's what keeps me off of suicide,
the idea that there's something left for someone else to clean up.
How rude and inconsiderate.
It's a pain to take out the weekly trash, let alone figure out what to do with over a hundred pounds of flesh that's about to go bad.
The even worse, in India, where there's a religious cult which believes you shouldn't desecrate any of the elements with the dead.
They can't be buried, or burned, they can't be cast out to sea.
So they're taken to the top of the tower of silence where they become the vulture's problem.
How's that for passin' the buck.
No. When I go, I want to go clean.
Convienient, leaving no mess.
As if I vaporized while taking a shower.
As if I moved to Antarctica leaving, no forwarding address.
