“You could crack this stony sky
With a single burning kiss
You could bleed this starless night
Like a desert oasis

When love turns to dust, leaves the splinters of your trust
Forgiver
Shine on, shine on
In the beauty of the storm , I wither”

(c) James Grant, from the album “Dogs In The Traffic”, 1991

Admittedly, this one has a working title, as opposed to a final one. Written in April/May 2015. Loosely inspired by an old Love and Money track called Who In Their Right Mind? Given the opening line, the image that sprang to mind was of a couple stuck on a small rowing boat, stuck on a glass-like, calm river in a big city, but don’t exactly feel the same way about each other. The idea of that boat having a glass bottom so that everything is visible to everything else, both up and down, was appealing.

Lots of imagery and allegory, a fair amount of it “borrowed” from watching too much TV (specifically an episode of Holby City about an repeat/obsessive organ donor) and re-interpreting some of the things that characters say – not really inspired by any one person in particular. I’m still umming and ahhing about what to do with this one. It may end up being a donor song to another track. Not finished by any standards yet.

Glass Bottomed Boat              

Verse 1/
Becalmed on a river of passion
Not hard to see, you don’t feel the attraction
No silver lined clouds around to bore your view
Its not about that look in your eye
While your dreams float on by
And your love life just mends and makes do

Verse 2/
Could you grow a heart from a stone?
Maybe you could, if you’d leave it alone, for long enough.
A hostage to your anger and resentment
Seems sometimes that life is wasted on the living
And time is too easily wasted by the young.

Chorus/
The sound of sobbing drowned by the silence
Of the dance of blue lights
And I never stopped to ask you how you felt
‘Bout makin’ sacrifices you never asked me to, to make it last
And when you reach the bottom of your glass
All you can taste is the bitterness of the past.

Middle 8/
Sitting here with you in a room where you’ve never been
Talking ‘bout places and people you’ve never even seen.
The walls have eyes to go with their mouths and ears
And you’ll listen and look and fight to be free of all your fears.

Verse 3/
You get under my skin like no one else
Take me right to the edge then reel me back in
And the steam of your promises in winter fade with the mist.
You paint a landscape in my mind full of mountains to climb
And leaving me with a path to the top that’s just too hard to find.

(c) Lyrics: Steve McCarthy-Hunt, 2015