The Black Butterfly

Lyrics

I just woke up and this will be day six of a six-day recording session with Nathan We'd been working on both of these musical collaborations The one with Sean Yeaton and this one, with Ben and Jim Last night I dreamed that Elliott Smith was still alive And he had hired me to play guitar with him With his band he was taking on tour There was a band meeting in the hotel lobby Elliott was quiet and the drummer, the band told us Was gonna read us something It was a letter that Elliott had written And Elliott wanted us to gather round and hear it The letter was three pages long, soggy, and covered in seaweed The point of the letter was that Elliott didn't want any of us To complain about anything at all during the tour The letter went on to say that Elliott had a son Who was possibly going to flunk the third grade And that this was a real problem Something he was very stressed out about And that if any of us had any complaints to realize that life could be worse As none of us had any kids that going to flunk any classes He was rubbing his eyes while his drummer read the letter Just like Elliott did during our small Swedish tour After the letter was read, I asked Elliott, "Hey, where you living?" And he said, "Kakron," like the city of Akron with a K in the front of it He said he really missed the beach and the nice weather of Los Angeles Just when I was about to ask where Kakron was, I woke up from the dream It was nice to see Elliott Smith again The sun is shining today, I'm gonna get out and walk And enjoy it before going to the studio Nathan and I met Caroline last night for dinner in Chinatown He's a good-natured person, it's nice to have him around Caroline asked him how it's going with raising his kid He said, "It's been a lot of fun but it's really not too hard," he said He's one of the few friends of mine who's raising a kid Who's not complaining about how hard it is and how much sleep he's losing We opened up fortune cookies there at the table Nathan's said, "New financial resources will become available" Caroline's said, "It will be a good day tomorrow, try something new" And mine said, "You will be invited to social gatherings and parties soon" It's a new morning now and guys are hammering and drilling outside My god, they've been working on that garage for years I saw a woman yelling at them at least a few times OCD-level stuff, for years and years and years she's been working those guys No matter what, no matter what, they can't seem to get the garage right Okay, it's another new morning now and I gotta get up and go My mind is still foggy and I don't have time write out the whole dream But I wrote these words down quickly that were related to the dream: "Quiet, dream, water, meditation, tape, house, Florida, beach, clothes, James Woods" I got out of bed this morning and now it's another new day, isn't it? The kids and their mom and her mom went to the Academy of Sciences To see the astronomy exhibit I told them I'm gonna nap today, to go on ahead without me I didn't want to get in the way of what the kids love so passionately They returned with pictures of butterflies And catfishes as big as small, small great whites That's nice of them, they brought photos back for me to see They said the photo of the black butterfly was especially for me I was in another world while we ate our Italian food Around the corner, there's always an unfinished album or another tour Got rehearsals coming up, heading to Australia and New Zealand Afterwards, we walked together to my girlfriend's apartment From the restaurant on Kennedy, I was quiet What does an uncle say? "How was your day?", "It was okay" I feel boring, kids don't care about an uncle who played the Ryman In the moment I can't think of a lot of words that rhyme with "uncle" or "Ryman" Other than "Garfunkel and Simon" Got to Caroline's apartment, they had fun playing with the cat Cats, now there's a thing we can all relate to We had fun, playing with the cat