Through a series of circumstances I recently latched on to an album called ‘The Ill Tempered Klavier’ by singer/songwriter Ben Shive. Ben has worked with Andrew Peterson, one of my favorite artists, and that was part of what led me to this album.
As happens to me too rarely, I was totally blown away by the whole album. I have listened to it over and over and virtually memorized all the songs.
As a service to the internet community, I’m planning to blog the words, as best I can decipher them, to the whole album. This entry gives the words to ‘A Name, A Name, A Name’ which is actually the first song on the album. I’m not taking them in order, just in the order I like them and can decipher the words.
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A Name, A Name, A Name, by Ben Shive
Monday at dawn the alarm’s crowing on,
Ring, ringing the new day in.
She’s up out of bed making breakfast and dreading
heading to work again.
She’s tired; so tired.
She’s swept off of the train and then out in the rain,
Carried away on a stream of strangers.
Men gaping out from their papers
And ladies, weightless as vapors
Make her tired; so tired.
The telephone calls and the windowless walls
Siphon the life from the halls where all these
Half-human beings sit staring at screens
Repeating routines without meaning
Leaving her tired; so tired; so tired.
She closes the door in her office and sits in a chair.
And there in the quiet she hears it,
a name she knows from somewhere
And the aspect of a face; the colors in its shapes;
And a fragrance and a taste;
she hears a name, a name, a name.
And the melody that plays behind the memory of a place,
And a kiss and an embrace;
she hears it, a name, a name, a name.
And if every passing day is the unfolding of a play
then the sum of it should say
a name, a name, a name.
