FOLLOW-ALONG SCORE
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YEAR ZERO
California: B.M.A. trent sept
Right hand clutching your bunny Jeanette
Touching the statue of a Cherokee man
With your other tiny outstretched hand
While I sit in darkness shielding my eyes
The Millennium Falcon escaping the bad guys.
Harrison Ford lets out a quip and grins.
What boy didn’t want to be him?
The Make Out Room: B.M.A. eighteen:
Jumping around playing the tambourine.
Upstaging the boy at the center mic stand,
So they kicked me of the band.
While you step out from behind Steps' Bar,
Restlessness fusing in the core of your star.
A flurry of parties and promiscuity
Until you figure out who you want to be.
Refrain:
The ripple in spacetime on the day that we met
has made the timeline of my life reset.
From this year back to the moment time began
Was the age Before Michael & Anne.
Adriatic, B.M.A. one-two.
A pink fedora and an ocean of blue.
What’s going on behind those squinting eyes?
Your latest relationship demise.
While I slip stumbling down an icy hill
In the suburbs of Portland under pre-dawn stillness.
The vestige of my quote unquote music career
Receding in the rear view mirror.
Bagnolet: B.M.A. one-one.
Revelers writhing ’til the rising sun.
You’re the Bond Girl de chez Bond Girls in your mother’s white dress.
The party practically made the press.
While I pace the knife edge of the steel-gray lake,
Watching the plastic bags play on the breakers.
Though it’s a frozen blue collar hellscape.
Milwaukee was my means of escape.
(Refrain)
B.M.A. nine, look at you dancing away:
Shimmying solo in the crowd at Club A.
Black skirt swaying to the pulse of the song.
You won’t be lonely for long.
While I roam the forest in the Fatherland,
Crossing the cornfields with an empty hand.
The skyline glimmers in Mainhattan town
Stretching the shadows on the ground
Swollen belly: B.M.A. five
White hands cradling the cradle of life,
Red lips drunk on progesterone.
You’re going to take this on alone.
While there on the Neva it’s quiet and still.
I’m on one knee and she’s saying she will.
The great Bronze Horseman must have come alive
And haunted my brief married life.
(Refrain)
(Instrumental section)
République: year zero point five:
I walked up and finally locked eyes with you live.
I texted you “can we stop texting yet?”
It was hard to believe we’d never met.
While you sat watching me amble toward you:
Blazer of gray, dress shirt of yellow and blue.
Your hazelnut eyes sizing up my ears, jaw, and chest,
Every part of your being screaming, “Yes.”
(instrumental section)
(Refrain)
lyrics & music by Michael Johnson
orchestral arrangement by Michael Johnson
Performed by the Reclinerland HQ Philharmonic Orchestra
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