Listen With Your Heart
I haven’t listened to this song in decades. I never played it after it was recorded (accept as an occasional refrain at the end of “What’s Wrong With The Mirror” live) and I’m only just remembering how it was intended, in part, as a challenge to my elder self. I’ve tried to keep my heart open. Doing so has its perils.
I remember when I was recording “Listen With Your Heart”, after a take John Nason came over and told me it made Earle Mankey (our producer/engineer) cry, which has always made me feel a special intimacy with Earle. Of course, John has a wicked sense of humor so I’ll never know for sure.
“Listen With Your Heart” has a shadow side as a kind of passive aggressive “How Do You Sleep?” aimed at my old Boon-mate Josh Clayton-Felt who was at the time becoming an indie rock star with School Of Fish. I thought we were in some kind of competition. Maybe we were. I don’t like thinking this or admitting it, particularly because Josh is gone and now it just seems mean and petty. If he were around we could laugh about it, but we can’t.
Listening with your heart isn’t easy.
Note: We were still thinking in terms of albums and sides back in 1990 so this would have been the end of Side 1.
Lyrics
LISTEN WITH YOUR HEART
You used to love the music
It used to make you cry
Now you only use it
the worse for you and I
I wonder if you wake up
in the night with a start
and wish that you could
listen with your heart
You used to say that it moved ya
and that was what you meant
Now it only moves ya
to a place with a higher rent
You may sing its praises
all day in the shopping mart
but you forgot to listen with your heart
These words ain’t good for anything
if the heart inside is closed
for even if the truth should ring
you would never know
you would never know
you would never know
if your heart is closed
Everything you dreamed of
is something you posses
but you can’t feel true love
when your touched by its caress
I wonder if its possible
that you could retrieve the art
of listening with your heart
Credits
Written by Andras Jones
Engineered & Produced by Earle Mankey
Purchase
$1.50