From a secret project, different version

When you are in, you are in love with everything and everyone responds in kind. I have played to crowds of millions. In person, on the airwaves, you have thought about me at night. You have been entered from behind and scuffed your kneecaps on a carpet. I am the lit-up dashboard of your potential boyfriend’s car. I am a tight T-shirt. I am just-washed hair. I am the smell of your own sex coming to greet you after a trip downtown. I am the taxi cab you let someone else get into. I am a strawberry milkshake. You think I wouldn’t be as good as chocolate, but I am.

The other day, I played a benefit concert for the Pine Creek Fire department because a lot of houses were lost recently in a fire in my town. I didn’t have my voice back so I played guitar with a country rock band who has one Grammy to my seven. I’m not saying anything about it, I know. I understand. It’s a senseless metaphor, a singer songwriter who can’t sing. But I saw you in the front row and I want to tell you publicly that your stupid needles pierced my heart.

From a secret project

There was a time when I was beautiful. I did not move, I shined. I didn’t need food and sleep, hardly. I had electric eyes.

There was a time when I was everywhere—I mean it, divine. I was in your airspace. Your television. I was on your mind.

I was the rug that burned against your kneecaps when you let him fuck you from behind.

I was the smell of your own sex coming to greet you.

I was your first lie.

You are going to tell me that my time is over; that my music is irrelevant; that I’m out of touch; mistuned. The time has come for me to admit some things to you about the differences between how I used to see the world and how I see it now. I am going to tell you that for a long time, I ordered strawberry milkshakes when I really wanted chocolate. All of my life, I wanted to be interesting, and for many years, I was. And despite my vocal problems and my personal catastrophes, I was feeling even more interesting and I was feeling very strong, and I was feeling vulnerable and sensitive and aware and full of grace, and then I took the stage at the Pine Creek Fire Department benefit I organized for the lost homes in my new Montana town, and I saw you with your knitting needles, and your needles pierced my heart.