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I was only six or seven years old,
You must've been a worn-out thirty-two.
Don't know what stories you'd been told;
Don't know what you went home toâ¦
But you brought a tiredness behind your eyes,
And you brought a shuffle in your walk.
They only left when your anger flared--
Felt like hell made out of ditto ink and chalk, yeah
Felt like hell made out of ditto ink and chalk,
Felt like hell made out of ditto ink and chalk.
It was a songâmy very first,
The kind a first-grader would like to write,
Full of wanna-be Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss,
Full of possibility and lightâ¦
It went like thisâ¦
One day I was a-walkin' down the street, street, street
A funny old man I did meet, meet, meet
He was walkin' on his big old feet, feet, feet
âtil he fell right on his seat, seat seatâ¦
Yeah that's what I wroteâ¦
My first song⦠yeah
You'd given us a few minutes and a
Blank sheet of lined paper.
I had no idea what I was
Supposed to doâ¦
Maybe I wasn't listening, or
Maybe I was scared,
But knowing me, it was probably just
That song I HAD to writeâ¦
My first songâ¦
I made language into music
I gave it a beat, gave it a rhyme
Made it funnyâmade a story, yeah
One that didn't exist outside of right thereâ
What I did in my mindâ¦
I wrote my first songâ¦
I wrote my first songâ¦
I wrote my first song⦠yeah
On that paper you handed to meâ¦
What I wanted to see was what you might think of it
Would you laugh? Would you smile?
Would it brighten that darkness there behind your eyes?
Would you sing it out loud?
But your tired, angry eyes,
Well, they looked, and read, and were more tired.
You could've just put it down nowâ¦
Too bad you couldn't just retire.
Noâyou stole my poetry
You went and stole my literary deviceâ¦
You wrote, NO, NO, NO in big red letters across the top
Wrote NO, NO, NO on my first songâ¦
You wrote, NO, NO, NO in big red letters across the top
Wrote NO, NO, NO on my first songâ¦
On my first songâ¦
So I became a teacher,
A teacher with a guitar in his hands.
I may sound corny, may sound un-rigorous
But someone's got to take a stand
For singin'â¦
YES, YES, YES⦠You've got a song to sing!
YES, YES, YES⦠I won't give up on you!
YES, YES, YES⦠We're gonna let FREEDOM RING!
YES, YES, YES⦠You are the BEST when YOU are YOU!
YES, YES, YES⦠You've got a song to sing!
YES, YES, YES⦠I won't give up on you!
YES, YES, YES⦠We're gonna let FREEDOM RING!
YES, YES, YES⦠You are the BEST when YOU are YOU!
When you are youâ¦
You are the best when You are You!
When YOU are YOU.
I was only six or seven years old,
You must've been a worn-out thirty-twoâ¦