The Ghost That Still Remains

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Some songs come out as if a guiding hand was directing the action, effortlessly and inspired. Some songs are nothing but hard work, honing forms and arrangement, until the spirit of the song is revealed. This song took a long time to get right. I believe I may have made as many as five or six different arrangements before coming to this, a song about the futility and damage to the soul produced by war.

The Ghost That Still Remains

I’m a dead man,
singing out my song,
singing out to the dead and gone.

I go way back
to ghosts that never do rest,
pain that never dies...
obsession.

They need you to keep the world the way it never was.
They need the protection of tradition.
They just wanna move in bodies that’ll do it like it’s always been done,
and ignore the contradictions..

It’s all over now, it’s only just begun.
There ain’t no way to explain
how it is you trip and fall,
see people walking through the walls.
It’s the ghost that still remains.

I was a young man,
brave enough to die,
dumb enough to believe the lies they told me;
be all a man can be.
But the ghost will never set you free.

“Freaks and infidels,” that’s what they said,
the ghosts of battles long forgotten.
Was it freedom or all for nothing,
or was it all just about the oil?
The ghost that lit the fires,
you could hear him hissing,
“Boil boil boil....”

I’m a dead man,
free to sing my songs.
Listen to me, I’m dead and long gone.

The ghost he lives between the words in your beliefs,
twisting up your head til you surrender.
You don’t even know he’s there.
You think your thoughts are your own affair.
You think you’re setting the agenda.

When a master of deception
looks you right in the eye,
tells you up is down and pleasure’s really pain,
you might see it like a shadow
in the furrow of your mind,
you might feel it like a fog inside your brain.

From the aching in your body
to the wrinkles in your frown,
the same old demon’s driving you insane.
‘Til your pain takes your reason
runs it right into the ground,
blame it on the ghost that still remains.

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