Filing Cabinet

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“Filing Cabinet” is the tenth and last song on Last Hero of the Western World, closing the album on a rather un-heroic note. The lyrics are based on a dream about some city-dwelling business friends dressed in fashionable sportswear visiting me (a world-weary locavore) and my wife (a rather statuesque life-affirmer without a cause) in our timbered house in the country. I have no such wife, house or nutritional habits, let alone classy business friends… but here’s the lyrics:

Youʼre bending down to pluck a rose
youʼre waving with your pantyhose
but Iʼm at a loss
Iʼm down with the crayfish

Their scissors snap, the water curls
around my feet, Iʼm waving back
“come down if you like
Iʼm not coming up now”

And donʼt make me tell you lies
about how great it is to be alive
when lifeʼs nothing but some casual payoff

You say that there is fun to be had
hidden in your filing cabinet
but I ainʼt got no reason to believe it
no I ainʼt got no reason to believe you after all

Weʼre spending every summer here
by the lake and on the pier
and nights underneath
the big yellow stone ball

And donʼt you dare romanticize
the steady pace of our rural life
itʼs just getting by
why scare the cows now?

You say that there is fun to be had
hidden in a filing cabinet
but I ainʼt got no reason to believe it
no I ainʼt got no reason to believe you after all

And oh… your semaphoric release
the cherry pollen settling on your lash
youʼll stand and wink for nothing
on the night of the crash
And all our Sta. Rosa colleagues
theyʼre bitching about the mildew in the cracks
theyʼll guzzle down my Lager before
heading back

Swans come
Swans go

At the end of the song you can hear the door to the recording booth shut for the last time. After that, the actor steps aside. You don’t get to witness that part.