Store Window Reality

 So the first lyric in my Lyric Legacy was originally a poem I wrote in 1969 long before I had a computer. Some time between the time that it was set to music and 2003 when I recorded it for the first time, the paper hard copy was "lost".

At the time (the early 2000s) I had become a member of the USENET writer's group alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo. I decided to write the lyrics down from memory and then fill the gaps in what I remembered with Cyberpunk / Science Fictions themes. The re-write worked well. When I did the recording I used the ACID Pro Digital Audio Workstation to use loops and audio snippets I recorded and the vocal used "Auto Tune" to give it "computerize" sound. This being several years before "Auto tune" became a wide spread "thing". My use was not for pitch correction but as an experiment in manipulating my voice into a kind of voice synthesizer.

Store Window Reality

Lookin' into empty store windows
walkin' down a deserted street
waitin' for a sunrise that'll never arrive
listenin' to your empty heart beat   
The truth cuts to the bone
When you realize you're alone

 

 you know it isn't real

cause you can touch it

and there's nothin' to feel

seekin' the usual suspects
tellin' all the familiar lies
makin' the same old excuses
turnin' away from their empty eyes    
The truth cuts to the bone
but now you're bleeding alone

 

you know they weren't real 

cause you could touch them 

and there was nothing to feel

runnin' the virtual defenses
crushin' the same old ICE
hopin' for a perfect solution
fallin' for the same old vice
The truth cuts to the bone
yet you say you want to be alone

and you know she wasn't real 
cause you could touch her 
and there was nothin' to feel

Lookin' into empty store windows 

walkin' down a deserted street
waitin' for a sunrise that'll never arrive
listenin' to your empty heart beat   
The truth cuts to the bone

When you realize you're alone

you know it isn't real 

 cause you can touch it

and there's nothin' to feel

© 1969, 2002, 2022 copyright by Joel Crook All Rights Reserved

It's not a "happy" song but I was fifteen years old when I wrote the original poem as a moody and isolated teenager. In those days my aspiration in writing was to externalize the feelings I was having although it was many years before I came to understand what I was trying to accomplish. 

The revised lyrics use terminology which comes from the writings of Many of the finest SF writers: William Gibson,  Bruce  Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Walter Jon Williams, and Roger Zelazny -- CyberPunk is desolation... with style.

Looking back now I'm not even sure I used the original music. for the recording. HERE  is am mp3.