David Berman

cbl

cbl

Active Member
Joined
May 16, 2019
Messages
269
Location
Portland, ME
Hi.

I plan on sitting here the rest of the night listening to everything David Bernam, sipping whiskey and intermittently crying. I'd love some company.

Lyrics. Stories. First Listens. really anything you got.

I never had the chance to see him perform live. None of the Purple Mountain shows near me worked with my schedule, but I was looking at flights for some of his other shows. I feel frivolous now.
 
David Berman, Jason Molina, & Elliott Smith’s lyrics all got me through some really dark times. Now they’re all gone.

DCB was a lyricist without peer. Fuck what a loss.

Fake IDs
honeybees
the jagged skyline of car keys
I never knew a bird could fly so low
—
Now there's a lot of things that I'm gonna miss
like thunder down country and the way water drips
when you're running for the door in the rain
—
Friends are warmer than gold when your old
keeping them is harder than you might suppose
lately I tend to make strangers wherever I go
—
The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind
all the suffering gets done by the ones they’ve left behind
 
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I believe the stars are the headlights of angels
driving from heaven to save us
to save us
look in the sky
they're driving from heaven into our eyes
and though final words are so hard to devise
I promise that I'll always remember your pretty eyes
your pretty eyes
—
When I go downtown
I always wear a corduroy suit
cause it's made of a hundred gutters
that the rain can run right through
—
half hours on earth, what are they worth?
I don't know
In 27 years I've drunk 50,000 beers
and they just wash against me
like the sea into a pier
 
shot of dixie hemlock will take care of the pain

Berman had the most unique of abilities of being poetic, mournful, avant-garde all while being remarkably approachable...almost affable and comedic at times. He was angsty with an incredible sense of humor. the way he communicated humility through pain was singular.
 
Damn. What a travesty. Horrible news, after such great news that he was back at it.

A bit surprised that there seems to have been a run on the Purple Mountains album LP already, or were they already all sold out? It was up next on my to buy list. Small potatoes, though, compared to losing such a brilliant man.
 
Imagining Defeat

She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.

Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn’t matter.

And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn’t matter

except as a memory of rest or water.

Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise

that she woke me up at all.
 
The Broken Mirror

My life is almost over; that's a fact
Statistically derived but simply true;
I look into the mirror, but it's cracked

And so reflects two, three, or more, that lack
Cohesion. Which one's goal shall I pursue—
My life is almost over; that's a fact—

In time remaining? Luggage largely packed,
Past boxed and crated, little left to do,
I look into the mirror, but it's cracked

And won't be fixed and always did refract
The one before it into at least two.
My life is almost over; that's a fact,

But life cannot be lived in the abstract
And begs for certainties that it once knew:
I look into the mirror, but it's cracked;

I look away in search of the exact;
Nights melt the shadow shrinking from my view;
I look into the mirror, but it's cracked.

My life is almost over; that's my fact.
 
Fuck, I just found out about this. David Berman meant a lot to me. I thought it was a miracle we even got the album this year and it was just what I needed. I've never really been interested in lyrics outside of the context of a song but Berman may have been my favorite pure lyrics writer. Some of my favorite lines have already been quoted but this one from How to Rent a Room has always stuck out to me:

An anchor lets you see the river move
 
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