Endless Walkers
Words and music by Jim Gilkeson
©Copyright, 2019, by Jim Gilkeson. All rights reserved.
Lyrics:
Tina: There never was a time when Tina didn’t feel like a stranger / She grew up in a war and her family was never out of danger / People around her thought she was some kind of angel / But the ones who knew her close got a dose of her sadness and anger
She went a little nuts and the rumors around her spread / She didn’t like the pills and she didn’t mind the voices in her head / Except when they told they thought she’d be better off dead / But Tina never listened to anything anyone said!
Tina sees lights in the Southern sky / She’s an Endless Walker in a Tiger’s Eye / Gotta make sure they see me this time / Don’t you dare to pass me by! / TAKE ME! I been stranded here too long / No one’s going to notice when I’m gone / I’m all right, Lord, but it’s been too too long / I’m an Endless Walker, Lord / ’Til you take me home
Panda; There was never a time when Panda felt right in his own skin/His mind was either all the way out, or all the way in / His days were backwards and crazy, but that’s not a sin / And he wondered at night if his light would ever shine again
Nobody asks, and Panda never talks anymore / About a little souvenir he brought home in his blood from the war / They sent him up to Mayo, but he never figured out what for / He rambled when he talked, but didn’t balk when he walked out the door
People see Panda and their minds just freeze / He tells ‘em where to go in Vietnamese / Panda sees lights in the Southern Sky / He’s an Endless Walker in a Tiger’s Eye / TAKE ME! I been stranded here too long / No one’s going to notice when I’m gone / I’m all right, Lord, but it’s been too too long / I’m an Endless Walker, Lord / ’Til you take me home
Panda & Tina
Panda met Tina one night, they were standing in line / Waiting for their dinner downtown at 2th Street and Vine / Panda made a joke about some deadly Kansas City wine / “The way I’m feelin’ tonight, she said, “even that would be fine!”
Panda told Tina his name means “Everything flows” / And she was a queen, she said, just disregard her clothes/ Downtown they’re a pair of faces that everyone knows / They hold hands like friends when the sidewalk bends, or the wind blows.
A fantasy about Endless Walkers, who, like Estha, a character in The God of Small Things, spend their days in solo motion along the roadsides. Every town has at least one. Here, a couple I used to see endlessly walking the uneven sidewalks off downtown Lawrence, KS. Silently, slowly, hand in hand, they tread a path, perhaps an unearthly one, that only they can see.
Jim: vocals, ac. guitar
Reed: drums
Uffe: lead guitar and bass
Ria: vocals