How Do You Stand When You've Been Crushed?
And I can't stop staring back
How did I get this way?
Take a big look at a living lie...
It was the finest neighborhood in the small town, and the house everyone went by every day was as beautiful as it ever was.
At least it was then.
In a few hours helicopters would surround it from the sky and newscameras would surround it on the ground, but that was the future nobody saw coming. Since everyone just went by the house on the way to their usual jaunts they had no idea the wife was strangled, the son suffocated, and as their corpses' odors began wafting through the air that usually hummed with conditioning that the great man who wasn't that great at all had prepared the final seconds of his life.
Chris Benoit stepped off the chair and into the underworld.
Thank God.
Sometimes I dream about it
What it's like back home
The railroad tracks and the pussy willow
Every time something like this happens, the cliche angel gets its wings. But out of all the It Wasn't Supposed To End Like Thises there've been and will be, this is headlining the It Wasn't Supposed To End Like Thises.
He came from a small town singularly focused on a mission. He had had an idol who he saw as a great man. The great man in reality was horribly flawed. The great man would give his soul for the lights and end up crippled and raving.
The important thing was the young fan never saw the great man for anything less than the great man he was for 20 or 30 minutes a night.
And as he sat mesmerized in his seat, an idea formed. To prove himself to the great man. To be like the great man.
...maybe even better?
And I had to leave it
But I go back
Whenever my tired head hits the pillow
This is Tokyo. This is Mexico City. This is Moose Jaw at 20 below. This is Tijuana. This is Kyoto. This is your legacy, and it's starting one city at a time.
The singular vision, the focused intensity, to all at once be the great man and surpass the great man.
The singular vision that would spawn a generation of everybody else like him, who wasn't 6'6" and 300, who just wanted to do it like all the great men the'd seen do it before them.
Maybe there were only 12 people.
Inconsequential.
Did the great men before them ever care about such pittiances?
They did.
He just didn't know it.
This is another prefecture.
This is another small Mexican town where you take your applause and hold it for days. Applause translates very well.
And soon, one day, you'll be able to come to the promised land.
Rags to rags and rust to rust
How do you stand when you've been crushed?
He thought he'd killed him. It wasn't even his fault, and he thought he'd killed him. The guilt nearly drove him away. The previous 5 years--7?so hard to tell anymore--would've disappeared under his feet. He would've come out of it marred for life.
But in the end, he would've had to have face himself as something less than a great man.
And once that turned out all right, he continued to become a great man.
?uestlove of the Roots so eloquently stated an artist's biggest Catch-22 once in an interview with Toure. Everybody who is merely loved wants to be respected. Everybody who is merely respected wants to be loved. And he already had their respect. He didn't have that many checks that cleared, though. He didn't have that good a relationship with whichever Mountie Came Lately worked the border.
And a broken relationship, and kids...
His name dried on the ink and he was gone.
So rags to riches was a bust
Nobody ever asks a glue person how they do it, and the reason they don't ask is because the glue person is the glue person, and if you ask the centipede how it walks pretty soon it goes nowhere. And in some cases the glue person knows where everything is, and in some cases the glue person has fostered all the relationships with the big money clients, and in some cases the glue person went out for 12 minutes, was awesome, and promptly forgotten.
Another thing that makes the glue people the glue people is they may disagree 100% with what you want done. You will never, ever find this out about glue people until after the job is done, in which with their head down and a genial mumble they will voice their complaints.
He was now a glue person, but soon his time would come.
And even though he didn't really want to work with her, it was just work.
What was the worst thing that could possibly happen?
Busted once again
But I'll show them one day
That I can buy and sell the world
Glue is a perfect thing when it works. When it comes undone, it greatly resembles a porn theatre's floor at 1 a.m.
And the glue person was coming apart.
Him and everyone like him--all the glue people--were finding out what good glue people were in a major corporation. The major corporation was the Matrix, and the glue people were the batteries. Day after day, week after week, another wave of bullshit, another slight stain on the great man, another fucking tsunami of bullshit, and as the non-glue people undid the company he could see nothing but a sea of brown coming up to his eyes, drowning him to his death.
This never happened to the great man.
And in the immortal words of Joseph Strummer, what are we gonna do now?
And one day I'll come through with my American dream
But it won't mean a fucking thing
It didn't matter in that time that there'd been a little bullshit along the way here, too. In the great place on the great date next to his best friend, with his family surrounding him in the great ring, the great man ascended to full-fledged legendary status. The call of the great man's accomplishment on the evening would become legendary as well, as well as it should've been.
He'd seen a hero. He'd tried to become the hero.
He'd outshined the hero.
He'd become a hero.
In the hallways he was the North Star. In countless forums, he was the topic of discussion and everyone talked about him. On countless tape players and DVD machines, young men saw a great man and committed his every step to memory, in order to one day--with luck--become the great man themselves.
Rags to rags and rust to rust
He was at once the figurehead and the puppet. While he was the man, he wasn't, and everyone who knew enough about such things knew it.
And since he was a glue guy, he'd never complain about putting the new kids over. For a major corporation that was always the best thing about having a glue guy in a high (but not TOO high, hee hee hee) position for you. The glue guy took the biggest achievements and the smallest moments and no matter when you turned around and/or for what, there he was, plugging away.
They shook his hand and they talked his ear off and they wept at the way he made them more than what they really were and as he discussed with them his little grin came out.
And then they would walk down the hallway.
The great man was virtually alone.
How do you stand when you've been crushed?
It was the oddest thing but sometimes he could FEEL the confetti. FEEL it. In that hour alongside his best friend of years as they both exulted all they'd overcome they were immortal.
And then one day, he was dead.
How do you go to dinner with someone and find out at breakfast they're gone? What do you do with your best friends gone? When you are the survivor--
--should you be?
Rags to rags and rust to rust
Don't let me go
He tried to get away from it all. Couldn't. The great man had been forced to get away, but he just couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
He couldn't quite bring himself to do that?
And the applause echoed dimly, and the platitudes went in one ear and out the other
Don't let me go
And every day he got up and his best friend was still fucking dead, but didn't that happen to everybody no matter what they did?
Don't let me go
Who knew him? Who really knew him that was still around? Who'd ever even been inside the house, thick with regalia of trophies past and accomplishments to make the great man the great man at least superficially, where it mattered most? Who knew?
Because we all should've.
Don't let me go
The hiatuses we explained away as his need to unwind after a stressfilled year. The stories we heard of him pushing his body to unconscionable limits and seeing him unleash on the new punk kids tickled our hearts, and we all smiled and chuckled it away as the great man teaching the new punk kids what it would take to be a great man like he was. The intensity we wrote off as something he just brought to the ring. There was every evidence in the world something beyond the normal was fueling this man for what we could see of him, that there was a whole life he wasn't talking about we let him not talk about in this day and age because he was one of the good guys, that something some indefinable thing that we couldn't quite put our finger on was slightly off, and maybe said indefinable thing was what we loved about him the most.
And then last weekend the great man went back to the finest neighborhood in the small town and the house was as beautiful as it'd ever been.
It would be a fine place to end it all.
Don't let me go...
How did I get this way?
Take a big look at a living lie...
It was the finest neighborhood in the small town, and the house everyone went by every day was as beautiful as it ever was.
At least it was then.
In a few hours helicopters would surround it from the sky and newscameras would surround it on the ground, but that was the future nobody saw coming. Since everyone just went by the house on the way to their usual jaunts they had no idea the wife was strangled, the son suffocated, and as their corpses' odors began wafting through the air that usually hummed with conditioning that the great man who wasn't that great at all had prepared the final seconds of his life.
Chris Benoit stepped off the chair and into the underworld.
Thank God.
Sometimes I dream about it
What it's like back home
The railroad tracks and the pussy willow
Every time something like this happens, the cliche angel gets its wings. But out of all the It Wasn't Supposed To End Like Thises there've been and will be, this is headlining the It Wasn't Supposed To End Like Thises.
He came from a small town singularly focused on a mission. He had had an idol who he saw as a great man. The great man in reality was horribly flawed. The great man would give his soul for the lights and end up crippled and raving.
The important thing was the young fan never saw the great man for anything less than the great man he was for 20 or 30 minutes a night.
And as he sat mesmerized in his seat, an idea formed. To prove himself to the great man. To be like the great man.
...maybe even better?
And I had to leave it
But I go back
Whenever my tired head hits the pillow
This is Tokyo. This is Mexico City. This is Moose Jaw at 20 below. This is Tijuana. This is Kyoto. This is your legacy, and it's starting one city at a time.
The singular vision, the focused intensity, to all at once be the great man and surpass the great man.
The singular vision that would spawn a generation of everybody else like him, who wasn't 6'6" and 300, who just wanted to do it like all the great men the'd seen do it before them.
Maybe there were only 12 people.
Inconsequential.
Did the great men before them ever care about such pittiances?
They did.
He just didn't know it.
This is another prefecture.
This is another small Mexican town where you take your applause and hold it for days. Applause translates very well.
And soon, one day, you'll be able to come to the promised land.
Rags to rags and rust to rust
How do you stand when you've been crushed?
He thought he'd killed him. It wasn't even his fault, and he thought he'd killed him. The guilt nearly drove him away. The previous 5 years--7?so hard to tell anymore--would've disappeared under his feet. He would've come out of it marred for life.
But in the end, he would've had to have face himself as something less than a great man.
And once that turned out all right, he continued to become a great man.
?uestlove of the Roots so eloquently stated an artist's biggest Catch-22 once in an interview with Toure. Everybody who is merely loved wants to be respected. Everybody who is merely respected wants to be loved. And he already had their respect. He didn't have that many checks that cleared, though. He didn't have that good a relationship with whichever Mountie Came Lately worked the border.
And a broken relationship, and kids...
His name dried on the ink and he was gone.
So rags to riches was a bust
Nobody ever asks a glue person how they do it, and the reason they don't ask is because the glue person is the glue person, and if you ask the centipede how it walks pretty soon it goes nowhere. And in some cases the glue person knows where everything is, and in some cases the glue person has fostered all the relationships with the big money clients, and in some cases the glue person went out for 12 minutes, was awesome, and promptly forgotten.
Another thing that makes the glue people the glue people is they may disagree 100% with what you want done. You will never, ever find this out about glue people until after the job is done, in which with their head down and a genial mumble they will voice their complaints.
He was now a glue person, but soon his time would come.
And even though he didn't really want to work with her, it was just work.
What was the worst thing that could possibly happen?
Busted once again
But I'll show them one day
That I can buy and sell the world
Glue is a perfect thing when it works. When it comes undone, it greatly resembles a porn theatre's floor at 1 a.m.
And the glue person was coming apart.
Him and everyone like him--all the glue people--were finding out what good glue people were in a major corporation. The major corporation was the Matrix, and the glue people were the batteries. Day after day, week after week, another wave of bullshit, another slight stain on the great man, another fucking tsunami of bullshit, and as the non-glue people undid the company he could see nothing but a sea of brown coming up to his eyes, drowning him to his death.
This never happened to the great man.
And in the immortal words of Joseph Strummer, what are we gonna do now?
And one day I'll come through with my American dream
But it won't mean a fucking thing
It didn't matter in that time that there'd been a little bullshit along the way here, too. In the great place on the great date next to his best friend, with his family surrounding him in the great ring, the great man ascended to full-fledged legendary status. The call of the great man's accomplishment on the evening would become legendary as well, as well as it should've been.
He'd seen a hero. He'd tried to become the hero.
He'd outshined the hero.
He'd become a hero.
In the hallways he was the North Star. In countless forums, he was the topic of discussion and everyone talked about him. On countless tape players and DVD machines, young men saw a great man and committed his every step to memory, in order to one day--with luck--become the great man themselves.
Rags to rags and rust to rust
He was at once the figurehead and the puppet. While he was the man, he wasn't, and everyone who knew enough about such things knew it.
And since he was a glue guy, he'd never complain about putting the new kids over. For a major corporation that was always the best thing about having a glue guy in a high (but not TOO high, hee hee hee) position for you. The glue guy took the biggest achievements and the smallest moments and no matter when you turned around and/or for what, there he was, plugging away.
They shook his hand and they talked his ear off and they wept at the way he made them more than what they really were and as he discussed with them his little grin came out.
And then they would walk down the hallway.
The great man was virtually alone.
How do you stand when you've been crushed?
It was the oddest thing but sometimes he could FEEL the confetti. FEEL it. In that hour alongside his best friend of years as they both exulted all they'd overcome they were immortal.
And then one day, he was dead.
How do you go to dinner with someone and find out at breakfast they're gone? What do you do with your best friends gone? When you are the survivor--
--should you be?
Rags to rags and rust to rust
Don't let me go
He tried to get away from it all. Couldn't. The great man had been forced to get away, but he just couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
He couldn't quite bring himself to do that?
And the applause echoed dimly, and the platitudes went in one ear and out the other
Don't let me go
And every day he got up and his best friend was still fucking dead, but didn't that happen to everybody no matter what they did?
Don't let me go
Who knew him? Who really knew him that was still around? Who'd ever even been inside the house, thick with regalia of trophies past and accomplishments to make the great man the great man at least superficially, where it mattered most? Who knew?
Because we all should've.
Don't let me go
The hiatuses we explained away as his need to unwind after a stressfilled year. The stories we heard of him pushing his body to unconscionable limits and seeing him unleash on the new punk kids tickled our hearts, and we all smiled and chuckled it away as the great man teaching the new punk kids what it would take to be a great man like he was. The intensity we wrote off as something he just brought to the ring. There was every evidence in the world something beyond the normal was fueling this man for what we could see of him, that there was a whole life he wasn't talking about we let him not talk about in this day and age because he was one of the good guys, that something some indefinable thing that we couldn't quite put our finger on was slightly off, and maybe said indefinable thing was what we loved about him the most.
And then last weekend the great man went back to the finest neighborhood in the small town and the house was as beautiful as it'd ever been.
It would be a fine place to end it all.
Don't let me go...
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