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The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest

by Felix Obelix

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1.
2.
We are only human beings Fumbling with our moral leanings Soil is soft, the rock is hard Bury your granddad in the backyard Tock tock tock the clock is ticking Illness without, illness within Sight of sorrow, sight unseen Granddad’s breathing through machines If you had an hourglass Turned upside down the moment you were born Would you want to see it? And know how many years you had left to weather the storm And if you had a mirror That showed you in your final days Would you want to see it? And wonder how you could ever be that, ever be that age We are just overgrown children Playing house and playing nation Granddad in the war once shot a man Was it really simpler then? Granddad hates the Japanese nurses We all fight our parents’ curses How will this storybook end? With a letter we’ll never send If you had a time machine That took you back to your worst regret Would you choose things differently? And risk losing all the good things that came of it And if you had a body That did not need a moment’s rest Would you feel a little sorry? That you couldn’t solve a problem just by falling into Falling into bed a white-coated doctor comes out of the room where granddad has been sleeping for over a year now on his face is a mask but his eyes they deceive him we know what they’re thinking what do you expect me to do here? But he’s got a machine To monitor his heart What I wouldn’t give for a machine To monitor my heart The machine it marks the stops and the starts of your heart Your heart It monitors your heart The machine it marks the beating of your faulty heart Your heart It monitors your heart It sees the tears of your broken heart Your heart It photographs your heart It sees the tears of your broken heart Your heart It photographs your heart The machine it marks the stops and the starts of your heart Your heart It monitors your ---
3.
How do you do? We’ve been over this before In this very room Twenty-four hours ago Since then I’ve been Whistling this tune And mopping the spills from the Floor Ignore me when I try See the stain come out with lye Too tired for regret See your favorite sweater’s not been ruined yet Have you ever really listened to me? What’s that I can’t hear you over the Dinner’s ready get dressed See your favorite sweater’s not been ruined yet You fell asleep, to Mister Lehrer’s newsy hour Should have stayed in school But you robbed me blind of all my power Go smoke in the Garden again I get dizzy from the smell of the Flowers I won’t tell you how I’m filled with doubt We’re overdrawn in the checking account I wish I had just one good friend I’ll ask the neighbors if they’ve any money to lend No pill could fully kill this pain Well I’d buy some for you if we had any Money/my knee’s been acting up again But the hole in the sweater wasn’t a problem to mend What time is it? I’ve been offered a new job Pays a little more But we’d have to move ourselves abroad Fine with me I’ve got Wandering feet and we’ve been in the town far too long It’s a marriage no one can see Inside to know if it’s working Time she is a redeemer of All things good and faulty-hearted It’s a marriage no one can see Time she is a Inside to know if it’s working redeemer of Time she is a redeemer of all things good and All things good and faulty-hearted faulty-hearted I won’t leave you You’re the only Person I know In this country I won’t leave *you* I won’t leave you You’re the only I won’t leave you Person I know Person I know In this country I
4.
Oh! Cadaver 05:14
Oh cadaver, oh cadaver You never had her, never had her! She sleeps in the morgue tonight Lying on a sterile table When the doctors cut her up They’ll do it to the best that they are able There’s a lady From Poughkeepsie (New York! New York!) She lost her legs in a farming accident Now she walks around with hers Didn’t you dream about them wrapped around your head? c-a-d-a-v-e-r, c-a-d-a-v-e-r You shook her hand once at a Christmas party It was alabaster white and thin and dainty But now it’s grafted to the forearm of a foreman in Nantucket And it sickens you to think of what he does with it Singing oh cadaver, oh cadaver You never had her, never had her! No she never traveled much, never much reason to leave Now she lives in eight different states and four foreign countries If you could get her back you’d tell her she made a big mistake You’d have taken her anywhere, but she ignored you, she ignored you Her eyes they were the softest sea-green blue You looked at them and you looked again And once they looked back at you But now they’re sitting in the sockets of a boy blind since birth So wrapped up in their beauty you couldn’t see what they were really worth Oh cadaver, oh cadaver c-a-d-a-v-e-r spells r-e-g-r-e-t-s spells d-i-s-g-u-s-t spells s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e Oh cadaver, oh cadaver You never had her, never had her!
5.
Dead Name 01:30
You have a dead person's name He has a grave, but there's no one there He died in a camp, with his four-year-old boy How does it feel to have such a dead name?
6.
See the salesman, door to door Hauling his encyclopedias Hasn’t made a sale today He’s losing a Forgotten war Operator standing by Patch the cables to connect you Even for her there came a day When only silence Filled the line They found gold up on the hill Built the town around to mine it When the earth ran dry of ore The town no more And all was still The passage of time makes a man disappear His hopes and his works and his sorrows and fears So write a letter, fold it up and Place it in a plastic bottle Bury it six feet beneath the bomb shelter’s stairs The dinosaurs were tall and long And big and dumb and ruled the planet Then fell to earth a giant stone Now all that’s left of them are bones Assembled wrong The hospital where your son was born Sits on bricks rotting and sinking They’ll knock it down two months from now Its stories gone In a flash and wink The passage of time is the saddest affair To be remembered after death is rarer than rare So write a letter, fold it up and Place it in a plastic bottle Bury it six feet beneath the bomb shelter’s stairs The mimeographs are gathering dust In the cellars and the attics The adding machines and the Filmstrip screens’ Cogs inside have clogged with rust The sackbut and the chalumeau Crumhorn and ondes martenot Waves of electroniums Can no longer hammer on our Auditory bones You can’t stop The passage of Time goes on Whether you Like it or Knots in your stomach Fear in your Heart will stop beating And the lungs will stop breathing And you’ll be gone The people you touched will be gone The objects you touched will be gone The things that you did Places you lived In the battle with time There’s only one winner and that is him, him, him In the battle with time There’s only one winner and that is him, him, him
7.
With the shrivelling leaves of the rotting tree With the sibilant wheeze of the breathing machine With the colony collapse of the honeybee With the New Year’s ball drop countdowning With the divorcee’s pawnshopped wedding ring With the bee’s demise after the sting With the junk car hauled to the scrapyard lot With the job replaced by a better robot With the bee’s wings torn by a petulant tot With the jacked up rents of the tenement square With the packed up tents of the carnival fair With the hive ripped up by a grizzly bear Hovering in place Waiting to trace The pollen from the pansy To the knee Perpetuating their insect race Just like Just like you and Just like you and Just like you and Just like you and me With the head of state fleeing after the coup With the sad wife weeping after the woo With the Queen’s quick splat under the shoe With the missing limbs of the basketbase With the knitting mill worker’s disfigured face With the drone’s quick death and easy replace With the miner’s fate of shoveling coal With the salesman’s state of constant cajole With the bee born and dying in his role With the retouched ceiling of the Sistine dome With the endless slave labor of the building of Rome With the artless production of the honeycomb Hovering in place Waiting to trace The pollen from the pansy To the knee Perpetuating their insect race Just like Just like you and Just like you and Just like you and Just like you and It’s so hard to look the bee In his five compound eyes Say that we aren’t that alike When you both know it’s a lie It’s so hard to look the bee In his five compound eyes Say that time she won’t destroy us When you both know it’s a lie
8.
Pinprick 01:45
There was a time swimming in the ocean slime of your mother you were the size of a pinprick then you were the size of a dime You sported gills like a fish when you grew legs, you did kick, kick, kick you couldn't dream of a life outside when you slipped out with a scream You knew you knew nothing when you were small then, as a teen, you thought you knew everything at sixty-two, you thought you knew a thing or two but you died knowing nothing at all You took your last trip in a seaplane sprinkling your ashes in the Chesapeake bay a minnow will feast and be nourished on a speck of you lay its eggs and start it again
9.
The stirrup, the anvil, hammer and the drum The index, the ring, the middle and the thumb These bendable parts, these small bits of bone Are all that you need to answer the phone It’s never been safe to call me here They’ve tapped the phonelines again You shouldn’t be seen with me, dear They’ve put a camera in the oven A solitary ant, far from its home It follows an errant pheromone It travels hard in search of food As dogged in its tracks as it is confused Don’t play pattycake upon my thick hips They’ve got your prints in their files Don’t bother with my dry, cracked and chapped lips I’ve got a cyanide smile Please cover your mouth with both of your hands They’ve poisoned the air in the ducts Leave now out the backdoor while you still can To be with me you’ll need much more than luck I’m a dangerous lady for you to know But bugs can’t live in climates with snow Go back to the safety of Sioux Falls When I get there, I promise that I will call I crouch in the kitchen listening to The tick of the clock, the beat in the chest Counting down the hours, the minutes, the seconds ‘til the bomb drops, the ant stops and I can rest
10.
11.
It’s a starting over You’ve been lost down this road once before But now you are older And better at stomaching the cold Broken body and a broken heart You’re a wounded, stubborn bird Is this the ending or the start? From all of this what have you learned? Autumn’s falling, winter grows dim Crawl inside and wait for the spring Where will you be this time next year? Has your hope finally got the better of your fear? Is this the ending or the start? Day turns to twilight, turns to night Are you the sparrow or the hawk? Will you go easy or will you put up a fight? This is the tale of the Hawk and the sparrow This is the tale of the Sparrow and the Hawk

about

Felix Obelix is the songwriting/compositional project of Wendy Spitzer. Her music is a jerky blend of rocksy whatnot, avant-garde whosit and old-fashioned multiple-meter mathematical moxie: the twisted hits from unpopular Big-Note piano books that never were. Equal parts pop, experimental and classical, this is a cross-genre cocktail mixed by a barmaid with adventuresome taste. Song topics lie squarely in the land of dread. The inevitable march of time, finding meaning in life before death, the sticky mess of memory – these are all handled with a wry ear for irony, but with ample heart too. Felix Obelix is the idea that you can’t go home again and wouldn’t want to if you could, and if you did, you’d find it had been razed to the ground with a Gulp-N-Go built in its place, where you’d buy your slushee and marvel in its sweet goodness, because hey you’re thirsty, and you always hated that house anyway.

Released in February 2010 on the Pox World Empire label (Durham, NC), The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest was/is Felix Obelix's debut album.

credits

released February 23, 2010

All songs written and arranged by Wendy Spitzer. All tracks recorded by Jay Cartwright and Greg Klaiber, and produced by Jay Cartwright with Wendy Spitzer, except Cyanide Smile, recorded and produced by Alex Lazara, and Dead Name, recorded and produced by Wendy Spitzer. Mastered by Jeff Carroll, Bluefield Mastering, Raleigh, NC. Wendy Spitzer: vocals, bass, organ, oboe; Jay Cartwright: accordion; Dylan Thurston: xylophone, vibraphone, glockenspiel, drums; Billy Sugarfix: Theremin; Colin Booy: trombone; Phil Cook: vocals on See the Stain Come Out with Lye; David Jordan: clarinet; Terry Lonergan: drums; Emma Nadeau: French horn; Nate Osborne: trumpet; Wylie Pamplin: charango; Wes Phillips: drums; Stuart Robinson: trumpet; Aaron Smithers: French horn.

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Felix Obelix Pittsboro, North Carolina

Felix Obelix is the avant-pop project of Wendy Spitzer. The twisted hits from unpopular Big-Note piano books that never were.

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