You Ask Yourself

by Chris Wells

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about

Thanks to Shakespeare and Silo.

This started as a riff on Hamlet and then I started to think about my children (who are in their 20s) and the problem their generation faces in imagining their future when so much is “falling” and things are so uncertain. I wanted to try to describe the situation honestly and also to find real hope.

lyrics

YOU ASK YOURSELF

Your uncle kills your father
smiles to your face
Your mother doesn’t seem to mind
You see a dead man
You start to doubt
Start to dread what you might find

The court is saying nothing
Just hold their noses
and make as if they’re blind
They treat you like you’re seeing things
You’re happy to oblige
Might be even happier to leave it all behind

But you ask yourself about yourself, about the others
And you ask yourself: Is it a sin to forgive?
You ask yourself what you owe to the future
How to live, when your world is dying

Is it in the air, my child?
The fog, the taste of failure
The killing shame?
And if we all are feeling it
Who are we to blame?
No way to break the spell of a belief you have not named

The night before our King was shot
He made it to the mountaintop,
He saw the promised land
Do you wonder what he found up there?
Found in himself,
To see so clearly, so clearly understand

Do you ask yourself those kind of questions?
Do you take those questions down to the river?
Do you ask and bet yourself on the asking?

How to breathe, when the fever’s rising
See, through the deep denying
Live, when your world is dying

In France they make a kind of cheese
It smells like rotting flesh
A sister says she likes it
it reminds her of her death

When they spoke of end times
Sickness and burning
Did they sense a way to make us whole?
Maybe there’s contagion
Of a subtler sort
And the fires that are razing fertilize the soul

OK, there was a warning
Some guy said “God is dead”
It just took a while to land
Sister knows how it goes
The readiness is all
You know it’s always today when that time is at hand

So you ask yourself and you wait for an answer
You ask to see, where is the meaning can survive?
You ask… there’s the hope for the future

How to breathe
See
Live
Live
Live
Live

credits

released September 9, 2021
Music & Lyrics: Chris Wells
Guitars, vocals, keys and Logic: CW

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about

Chris Wells New York, New York

Chris Wells is a songwriter, activist, and teacher based in New York City. He is deeply influenced by the projects and teaching of Silo (Mario Rodriguez Cobos).

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