“I’m the picture in the background or the soundtrack to an uneventful day”
History
I have no idea when this song was written, except that it was some time in my 20s. Before 2003, I think. I was 'working through some issues' at the time, in a totally obsessive and hermetic way. I basically lived with my parents (my mother wasn't well), and I barely held down a job, had no friends, and spent all my time tying myself up in knotty logical arguments. And this song was a fairly straight description of that time, and the sense of the world going by with me having less and less connection to it. And how (in what might have been a conscious reference to Richard Thompson's song Beeswing) I wouldn't have it any other way.
Lyrics
You are the crowd With your eyes on something shiny And your minds refined like diamond as you sway And your very lives dependant on each play I am the cloud Who wanders by and draws your eyes up to the sky and then politely fades away I don't take more than seconds from your day ------------------ You are the crowd I am the cloud That distracts you just enough to let you know you were distracted from your place ------------------ I'm hardly here I'm the picture in the background or the soundtrack to an uneventful day I hardly make a difference either way I think aloud But don't think I'm thinking to you My thoughts just go right through you on their way To their destination many miles away ------------------ I am the cloud I am the cloud That's just a chip in the horizon and I wouldn't have it any other way ------------------Credits & Copyright
Written by James Bell some time before 2003 (probably). Recorded and released by James Bell in May 2018. (C) & (P) House of Lyra.