Song 83: Artist's

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
I cancelled dinner
Not because I don't love you
But because the second verse
Was doing something I didn't expect
And the second verse
Will not wait for the main course
The second verse is a cat
That sat on my chest at midnight
And I must attend to it now
Or it will leave
And it will not come back
In the same shape

The nucleus accumbens
Fires the same reward signal
For a solved line of poetry
As for a kiss
And tonight the line
Is winning
And I am not sorry
And I will be sorry tomorrow
And tomorrow is a problem
For the version of me
That didn't finish the verse

[Pre-Chorus]
And the zone — the flow state —
Where the default mode network
And the executive network
Stop arguing and start collaborating
Is the closest I have been to god
Without leaving my chair
And god was in the pencil
And the pencil was almost out of lead
And that's the whole religion

[Chorus]
L'amour de l'artiste, l'amour de l'artiste
The love affair between the maker and the made
L'amour de l'artiste, l'amour de l'artiste
The dinner cancelled and the deadline disobeyed
I love you but the work is talking
And the work has a window
And the window is closing
And I have to climb through it now
While my body still remembers
How to fit

[Verse 2]
The ugly truth about the artist's love
Is that the work gets the best hours
The partner gets the residue
The work gets the version of me
That hasn't yet been disappointed by the day
And the partner gets the version
That has been in a room for eleven hours
With a pronoun that won't behave

And yet
The partner stays
And the staying is not martyrdom
It's the recognition
That the person who emerges
From the room at midnight
Smelling of eraser dust and cold coffee
Is more alive than the person
Who went in
And the aliveness is contagious
And the contagion is worth the wait

[Chorus]
L'amour de l'artiste, l'amour de l'artiste
The love affair between the maker and the made
L'amour de l'artiste, l'amour de l'artiste
The dinner cancelled and the deadline disobeyed
I love you but the work is talking
And the window is closing
And I am climbing through it
Whether or not
I fit

[Bridge]
I am writing an album about love
And the album has taken more of my love
Than any single person in it

That's the joke
And the penance
And the gift

I gave a hundred songs
The best of my attention
And the attention was love
And the love was real
Even though the songs
Can't hold my hand
Or cancel their plans for me
Or answer at three in the morning


But I made them
The way you make anything
You love
With too much time
And not enough sleep
And the certainty
That no one asked for this
And the stubbornness
To finish it anyway

And the finishing
Is its own love letter
To the version of yourself
That started

[Outro]
L'amour de l'artiste