Week 150 // River Song 2

by Mount Everest

supported by

	/

Digital Track
Streaming + Download

Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

Purchasable with gift card

name your price

You own this

about

This is the 150th Mount Everest song! Wow! I’m reserving my ritualistic self-congratulatory retrospective for this websites three year anniversary which is a mere six weeks away, but it would feel strange to let this particular milestone pass without so much as a mention. So now I’ve mentioned it!

This is a hard song to explain. Last week was weird, and ugly, and beautiful, and hard, for a multitude of reasons. Weeks with such pronounced highs and lows can give people the impression that they live at the whim of the universe. Conditions conspire and nobody’s got everything under control. It’s like standing in a river that is at one moment gentle, and at the next washing you out to sea. Living under such fickle conditions, you begin to appreciate a straightforward approach, hence this songs advice to “say what you think for once”. The best advice I ever got from a mentor was “cut the bullshit” (said in frustration). It’s still my advice to myself and everyone else. It is perhaps the only remedy for living in a universe that holds all of the cards.

I limited myself to just electric guitar this week. I wanted it to be fuzzy and a little bit raw. I’m pretty sure it is.

lyrics

Waiting down by the river
And now the bank is rising
You feel your shoes fill up with water

An honest introspective
A kinder disposition
Somehow your feet are getting hotter

And say what you think for once

I see the situation
I read the constitution
I glean the changes in the weather

I hold my wishes tightly
I let my options falter
As if they’d ever get together

And say what you think
‘Fore the water’s o’er the brink
Just say what you think for once

And everyone is moving
Atop the current rising
It swept them out into the ocean

A craft of true construction
A good and trusted vessel
And now they’re clinging to a notion

And there atop the crest of
A mighty swell it hits you
That you are bound to live forever

Out past a vague horizon
The solid ground beneath it
You put it all into a letter

So say what you think
‘Fore the water’s o’er the brink
Just say what you think
God is shiftless memory
Yes, say what you think
Cast your beauty, hold it deep
Oh say what you think for once