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Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet Delight.
Some are Born to sweet Delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.
There was a man who wrote this thing more than a hundred years ago. Some are born to sweet Delight. Some are born to Endless Night.
And it is a night that penetrates you everywhere, in memories, in your eyes, in your unkempt beard. It slips into your mouth and kneads your vocal cords, inserting pain like shards of glass, and every time you open your mouth and sing, you're forced to vomit blood. It's a night that has tarred your past and thrust it, pulsating and violent, into your brain, so every time you remember your life you just want to die.
Your father died of a heart attack when you were a teenager. He was a drunkard, violent. Shortly after, your mother would die of cancer and your sister would commit suicide. The last blow was September 11, when your cousin and her husband were on a plane that unfortunately crashed into the Pentagon. Your name is Mark Everett, aka E, aka the Eels, and you were born to Endless Night.
But one day, in this Night, you looked at your beautiful Christmas tree that laughed ironically at your life. You watched it with its lovely twinkling lights going from the maximum of light to the maximum of night. Light. Night. Light. Night. Light. Night. Cyclically. So you rummaged through your memories, being careful of the tar and glass, and found in your hands pearls of pure, white, absolute light. And so you realized that in that Endless Night, there were Full Days, brief intervals of light, to illuminate. And you decided you had to talk about this. Write it, play it, sing it. Vomiting blood in the attempt, maybe. But do it.
Blinking Lights And Other Revelations is what it came out to be. An hour and a half of music, two CDs, 33 songs. Your life. From the birth of A Magic World to the spiritual testament of Things The Grandchildren Should Know. Someone might find it presumptuous. Not you. It's your life. Sweet Delight & Endless Night. Turn by turn or together. You needed to tell it, that's all.
And so, anyone with 23 euros is authorized to take a look at your brain, at what you were, at what you are. A sideways glance, to be honest, you refuse to tell everything in detail, it would be too expected that way.
With geometric cadence alternate songs of Night and songs of light. Musically a whirlwind of bells, rough guitars, organs. And then your voice that scratches against the pain, until it wears it out and realizes that, beneath, happiness is hidden. Hey man, now you're really living. And this is what matters. And if scratching against happiness you discover that beneath, again, there is pain, there's nothing to worry about, you know that when you hit bottom - the bottom of the bottom - you'll scratch again, and beneath there will be a bit of happiness waiting for you.
Meanwhile, you give strangers pieces of yourself so personal that as I listen to you I feel like wiping my shoes - and thoughts - on the doormat outside the door. We have no right, we, to stay here. To eavesdrop on your life. No right. It was a gift, or rather a sharing. You remind us of something that many have said, and even more illustrious than you. You tell us that the gentleman mentioned above, William Blake, perhaps was wrong. You show us your Night, and your Light. And you tell us that the Night is anything but endless, and if you just hold on, morning eventually arrives. And then again the night. And then the morning. Indefinitely. Not chronologically sequenced, of course. There will be mornings of a quarter of an hour and nights of forty years, maybe. But it doesn’t matter. The bottom of the bottom and the purest light cannot merely be measured by a stopwatch.
You place us in front of your same Christmas tree, which laughs ironically at everyone's life. With the same, usual, silly little lights. But you, softly, teach us to see something more in them. A signal. A message. A Morse code. From darkness the light. From the light the darkness. Forever. Like this.
Blinking light on the airplane wings / up above the trees / blinking down a morse code signal / especially for me / ain't no rainbow in the sky / in the middle of the Night / but the signal's coming through / one day i will be alright again
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
04 Blinking Lights (For Me) (02:01)
Blinking lights on the airplane wings
Up above the trees
Blinking down a morse code signal
Especially for me
Ain't no rainbow in the sky
In the middle of the night
But the signal's coming through
One day i will be alright again
Blinking lights on the highway cars
Stopping one by one
Get a look at the accident
Didn't see that one coming
And the doctor in the sky
Gonna bring his chopper down
Gonna bring me out alive
And set me on the ground
Once more again
Blinking lights on the airplane wings
Up above the trees
05 Trouble With Dreams (04:33)
There's nothing that i wanna do
More than get alone and be with you
Trouble with dreams is they don't come true
And when they do they can't catch up to you
You don't need a thing from me
But i need something big from you
'cause you know i've got
An awful lot of big dreams
I'm walking down a lonely road
Clear to me now but i was never told
Trouble with dreams is you never know
When to hold on and when to let go
If you let me down it's alright
At least that leaves something for me
'cause you know i've got
An awful lot of big dreams
This is the life that i must lead now
Crossing fingers and wiping brow
Trouble with dreams is you can't pretend
Something with no beginning has an end
You don't need a thing from me
But i need something big from you
'cause you know i've got an awful lot of big dreams
08 In the Yard, Behind the Church (04:05)
In the yard, behind the church where
Butterflies and blackbirds search for
A safe place to rest the night away
We will go down to the brook and
Sit upon the overlook then
Forget about the troubles of the day
We will walk among the graves of
Men long dead with presidents' names and
Listen to the water flow softly by
I will kiss you on the lips now
And as the sky grows dark we'll strip down
And let the water wash away all lies
In the yard, behind the church where
Butterflies and blackbirds perch on
Gray stones as the garden's growing dim
We will lay down on the ground and
Put our cheeks against the dirt down
Where it no longer matters
Where you've been
12 Mother Mary (03:21)
People talking sound like dogs
Barking through the trees
Making no sense at all
Meaning nothing to me
Mother Mary
Quite contrary
I did not mean to let you go
So quick
People talking crack me up
They don't have a little clue
What it's like to be me
What it's like to lose you
Mother Mary
I grow weary
I did not mean to ler you go
So quick
People talking sound like dogs
Barking up the wrong tree
Take a good man down
And set the evil free
Mother Mary
Quite Contrary
I did not mean to let you go
So quick
14 Understanding Salesmen (02:43)
A knock on the door means
Hello jesus calls
A ring on the phone means
A trip to niagara falls
Daddy don't let me down this time
I'm all alone inside my mind
And it's no small thing
That i must prove to you
A late night card game
With the guys is alright
But i would rather take you
For a test drive
Daddy don't let me down this time
I'm all alone inside my mind
And it's no small thing
That i must prove to you
While i look out
On the passing fields
The sun through the bugs
On the windshield
Makes me feel
Like i
Don't matter
A knock on the door means
Hello jesus calls
A ring on the phone means
A trip to niagara falls
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Other reviews
By frantz
The greatness of this work... lies in its being a comprehensive compendium of life, from the suffering of abandonment and death, to the faith in a hope of a way out of the pain.
For me a Masterpiece of art and life!
By The Punisher1
Indulging in and gathering oneself in a moment of melancholy certainly does good, but doing it for an hour and a half is half a suicide.
Many tracks could have been spared as they are completely dispensable in the economy of the work.
