Thank you Mara for sponsoring Rob's Lament!!!

Urged on by a deadline imposed by a Songwriter's in the Round showcase at Providence's AS220, rob struggled to answer the call to write a song about that month's theme, "confined spaces". His answer was this eerily prophetic, somewhat alt-country, song about the duo's own car accident, and one that happened hundreds of miles away even as the song was being written.

About the Song

"I have a fan that can't listen to this tune because it recalls so viscerally a car accident SHE was involved in. I guess it does its job. The original lyrics are slowly being shredded in the bottom of my guitar case - Heather wrote them out really, really big because I'd only finished them 4 hours before we were supposed to perform them in Rhode Island. It's now one of Heather's Dad's favourites. Oh - and it wasn't till we got back to Maryland that someone told me I had been pronouncing 'Schwarzschild' wrong."

-rob

Lyrics

This space is getting smaller now
in an instant inward goes the frame
Schwarzschild would be proud
of this compression
of his equations

as we tighten up our grip
as we tighten up our eyes
as we tighten up our belts
this space is buckling all the while

a hairline at the corner
it's forming into fracture
she's already cursing
but I'm just looking up

this space is getting smaller now
I know you know that I had dreamed of something bigger
but for all the dreams
and all the wiles
and all the songs
and all the miles
this dream will lose some inches
at 60 miles an hour

fracture stresses structure
the cylinders are trembling
there's something steel and hungry
and it's coming through the hood

and I don't think it's known
how a car is like a gun
but exploding gets you nowhere
see, it's all in the control
'cause halfway out
it falls back in
and I'm falling in again
yes, I'm falling in again...

well, I've been focused all the while
on the dreams and on the miles
never noting that emotion
was what carried us so far

so it's the silence of the start
before the molecules were moving
they've been shocked into this silence
from which nothing can depart

now this space is resting quiet
Schwarzschild would be proud
we didn't even half it
but those six inches held the whole
they talk of hearts of stars
they don't speak of souls of suns
cut it out and crush it
the physics always win.

a fracture at the corner
the dreams are leaking out
she's already crying
and I'm already angry
but I'm just sitting looking out.

a fracture at the corner
the dreams are leaking out
she's already crying
but I'm just sitting looking out.

©2004 rob hinkal