E

[Verse 1]
                       E                               F#
But I don't believe in ghosts or anything, I know that you are gone and that I'm carrying
     G#m
some version of you around
       F#                                G#m
Some untrustworthy old description in my memories
                       E                         F#                  G#m
And that must be your ghost taking form, created every moment by me dreaming you so
             F#                G#m                                        F#                   G#m
And is it my job now to hold whatever's left of you for all time? And to re-enact you for our daughter's life?


[Verse 2]
       F#                  G#m                        E                             F#
I do remember when I was a kid and realized that life ends and is just over; that a point comes
                          G#m
where we no longer get to say or do anything
         F#                 G#m
And then what? I guess just forgotten
                                     E                              F#
And I said to my mom that I hoped to do something important with my life
                        G#m                          F#             G#m
Not be famous, but just remembered a little more, to echo beyond my actual end
                                         E                      F#                         G#m
And my mom laughed at this kid trying to wriggle his way out of mortality, of the final inescapable

feral scream
      F#                         G#m
But I held that hope and grew up wondering what dying means
  F#                       G#m
Unsatisfied, ambitious and squirming


[Verse 3]
           F#                                              G#m
The first dead body I ever saw in real life, was my great-grandfather's
              E                       F#
Embalmed in a casket in Everett, in a room by the freeway
                                                   G#m
Where they talked me into reading a thing from the Bible

About walking through a valley in the shadow of death
             G#m                                 E                       F#
But I didn't understand the words, I thought of actually walking through a valley in a shadow,
       G#m
with a backpack and a tent
              F#                              E
But that dead body next to me spoke clear and metaphor-free


[Verse 4]
      G#m                               E                         F#
In December 2001 after having spent the summer and fall traveling mostly alone around
    G#m                             F                     G#m
The country that was spiraling into war and mania, little flags were everywhere
      G#m                          E                                   F#
I was living on the periphery as a twenty-three-year-old wrapped up in doing what I wanted
           G#m
And it was music and painting on newsprint
                                            E
And eating all the fruit from the tree like Tarzan, or Walt Whitman
F#                         G#m
Voracious, devouring life, singing my songs
            F#                   G#m
Sleeping in yards without asking permission


[Verse 5]
         F#                         G#m
But that December I was shaken by a pregnancy scare
                                    E                    F#                                        G#m
From someone that I'd been with for only one night, many states away, who I hadn't planned to keep knowing
  F#                          G#m
A young and embarrassing over-confident animal night
        G#m                   E                                       F#
And the terror of the idea of fatherhood at twenty-three destroyed my foundation, and left me freaked out and
G#m                           F#                               G#m
wandering around mourning the independence and solitude that defined me then


[Verse 6]
                              E
Though my life is a galaxy of subtleties
   F#                                        G#m
My complex intentions and aspirations do not matter at all
       F#                           G#m
In the face of the crushing flow of actual time
                              E
I saw my ancestors as sad and misunderstood in the same way
        F#                                     G#m
That my descendants will squint back through a fog trying to see
     F#                        G#m
Some polluted version of all I meant to be in life
                                  E                           F#                         G#m
Their recollections pruned by the accidents of time, what got thrown away, and what gets talked about at night
                F#                           G#m
But she had her period eventually and I went back to being twenty-three


[Verse 7]
                                   E                 F#                           G#m
Eleven years later I was traveling alone again on an airplane from New Zealand to Perth, Western Australia
     F#                                  G#m
Very alone, so far away from you and the home that we had made
                                     E               F#                                 G#m
I watched a movie on the plane about Jack Kerouac, a documentary going deeper than the usual congratulations
                     F#                                  G#m
They interviewed his daughter, Jan Kerouac, and she tore through the history
                                                      E
She told about this deadbeat drinking, watching Three Stooges on TV
    F#                           G#m                          F#                             G#m
Not acknowledging his paternity, abandoning the child, taking cowardly refuge in his self-mythology


[Verse 8]
                                                 E                                  F#
And when she spoke I heard your voice telling me about the adults who had abandoned you as a sweet kid
                G#m
and left you to grow precariously
             F#                                     G#m
And when she spoke I looked in her face and saw you looking back at me
                                      E
On a tiny airplane seat screen at the bottom of the world
        F#                                       G#m
I saw a French-Canadian resemblance, and I heard suffering echoing
  F#                                G#m
A lineage of bad parents and strong daughters withstanding
                                             E                                    F#
And she had black hair and freckles and pale skin just like you, and she told the hard truth and
                          G#m
slayed the gods just like you
          F#                      G#m
I saw the cracks in the façade of posterity
  F#                        E
I missed you so I went home


[Verse 9]
    G#m                             E
The second dead body I ever saw was you, Geneviève
       F#                                         G#m
When I watched you turn from alive to dead, right here in our house
                                        E                       F#
And I looked around the room and asked “Are you here?”, and you weren't, and you are not here,
  G#m
I sing to you though
                                                        E                    F#
I keep you breathing through my lungs in a constant, uncomfortable stream of memories trailing out
      G#m
until I am dead too
                                            E
And then eventually the people who remember me will also die
          F#                                                      G#m
Containing what it was like to stand in the same air with me, and breathe and wonder why


[Outro]
         F#
And then distortion
             G#m
And then the silence of space
          F#
The Night Palace
          G#m
The ocean blurring
          F#
But in my tears right now
Esus2
Light gleams