Music

Schoolteacher!

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
mellotron - chris neville
piano - k.c. mcdonough
fiddle - anne harris
vocal - robbie fulks

This is a shameless appropriation of characters, emotions, and scenic detail from Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away. Elsewhere I've mentioned things going wrong in tracking songs, but here things went unaccountably right, in that a song that was slowly assembled improvisationally and piece by piece sounds, to my ears, like a natural and thought-out group performance.

Lyrics

Scarecrow in the doorway
Squint-eyed and underfed
Do you think with that box
Or just inside your head?
What nest of snakes beneath your brow?
What shall the lies you’ve learned avail you now?
Schoolteacher!

My uncle died this morning
I humbly bring the news
His wrath you have run from
His flesh you can’t refuse
Our clash of wills is prophesied
Do not regard me with such hateful eyes
Schoolteacher!

The Christ you reject
Has paid you back in full
Your wife, aged and bitter,
Has birthed an imbecile
His strangled cries tear at your soul
What promise holds your faith to make him whole?

Now standing pale and shorn
Of symbol and machine
Down comes the fiery finger
Ordained to burn you clean
Your God’s a fraud, your brother’s bought the farm
So let your child fall into my arms
Schoolteacher.

Guitar Chords/Tab

Guitar chords/tab are not available for this song