Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

By Matt WatersMusic
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Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review episodes

  • "the logic of his wings" (album version)
    The Logic of His Wings
    He spent the night
    Thinking about Madonna
    While restless
    In his bed
    During many of his
    Waking hours
    He acted out the dreams
    In his head
    Of being a baseball star
    A wrestler
    An action hero without a face
    The world was moving so
    Frantically around him
    He couldn’t keep
    Pace
    Beauty everywhere
    Beauty nowhere
    Beauty in the shadow
    Of a pigeon
    At the park
    Beauty everywhere
    Beauty nowhere
    His beautiful house
    Was falling apart
    The hope of what a new day brings
    The logic of his wings
    Inject adrenaline into a broken heart
    And fly, triumphantly
    Toward a dying star
    A little brown wallet
    Full of grandma’s money
    And a bike ride
    To the candy store
    A Butterfinger, and Gamepro
    Were everything he can afford
    These were the bright colors
    Of dreamlands
    Constructed in cubicles
    The brilliant backgrounds
    Above the orchestra
    For a middle-class American
    Musical
    Beauty everywhere
    Beauty nowhere
    Beauty in those sirens
    Wailing in the
    Dark
    Beauty everywhere, beauty nowhere
    Barmen
    We tend to play our part
    The hope of what a new day brings
    The logic of his wings
    Inject adrenaline into a broken heart
    Then fly, triumphantly
    Toward a dying star
    6 min
  • Show Do Tell: Gabriel Rotello
    Douglas Gabriel Rotello (born February 9, 1963) is an American musician, writer and filmmaker. He created New York's Downtown Divas revues in the 1980s, was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of OutWeek magazine, became the first openly gay columnist at a major American newspaper, New York Newsday, and authored the book Sexual Ecology. He now makes documentaries for HBO, The History Channel and other networks.
    In 1998 Rotello moved to Los Angeles and began making documentaries exploring American life and popular culture with World of Wonder founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Their first collaboration, the documentary Party Monster, centered on New York's downtown nightclub scene, a world which Rotello, Bailey and Barbato knew from their earlier days as musicians.[14] Their next feature, The Eyes of Tammy Faye,[15] is on Current TV's list of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die.
    Rotello currently makes science and history documentaries with Flight 33 Productions for the History Channel, Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, including series such as The Universe, Life After People, Big History and America's Secret Slang.
    https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/the-cbgb-conspiracy/
    53 min
  • Glittering (album version)
    Glittering
    How did we ever get in this party?
    They must have thought we were the help
    The mid-June moon
    Over the World Trade Tomb
    I don’t want to leave this rooftop
    With anyone else
    The host is a rich old bachelor
    Loves what I paint
    Your platinum hair
    Is like permission to stare
    You say, considering the three thousand churches
    In this town there are precious few saints
    Chorus:
    And it is summer next week
    If I could have remembered to speak
    I would invite you to Coney Island
    Not easy surviving
    In a city where indifference
    Is often the closest thing to kindness
    I’m just wondering
    If you are also pretending
    Not sure I deserve a happy ending
    Glittering, glittering
    We were glittering
    They warned me it all ends
    Embittering
    Yet I swore it wouldn’t happen to us
    Flickering lighting
    Down the complex stairwell
    And you made a joke
    About us being murdered
    Then your brother got ashes
    Caught in his sunglasses
    At that point your attitude became
    Quite a bit sterner
    You accused me of contentment
    Cause I had something going
    While the absurdity of our lives
    Had been revealed bare
    According to my recollection
    We parted at an intersection
    The host advised you
    Are not exactly rare
    Chorus
    Twenty years later
    It’s happy hour
    At the bar where I tend for
    Rent
    You have the same circuitous grin
    Here at Tailspin
    And the corners of your five spot
    Are bent
    The art world hyped me
    Then forgot completely
    The end of my career couldn’t have been
    More discreet
    Never saw you on television
    But wouldn’t make an assumption
    You stare a second longer
    Before ordering another Whiskey neat
    10 min
  • Chimney
    Chimney
    The autumn twilight
    The masquerade
    The days move forward
    Thoughtless cadets on parade
    Do I feel more afraid?
    Than what I used to be?
    Of being somebody, or nobody
    A fading glint
    Took me for a walk
    I buttoned my coat
    Though you wanted to talk
    With your dissolvable salt
    I know you didn’t mean to
    You’re just telling the truth
    The faces of strangers
    The indifference of a moment
    A neighborhood renting
    Because they can’t own it
    With their inevitable sin
    The motorcyclist makes a delivery
    Beside the lawn with a smoking chimney
    Chimney, has a memory
    Of the way things were supposed to be
    Chimney, lighting up in the dying heat
    With almond eyes set beside crow’s feet
    The evening animates
    In sashaying wind
    It could be leading me further out
    Or right back in
    To yesterday’s hobgoblin
    Everyone’s smarter than me
    Monuments to efficiency
    And I’m walking in a circle
    To find my way home
    Dimming those palaces in my mind
    Where the light relentlessly shone
    Upon pillars of stone
    Crumbling to dust in the present
    Eventually preserved in a dangling pendant
    When I’m a few blocks away
    It kicks back to sense
    Some ideas fade
    Love is permanent
    For a sense of recompense
    Then Chimney coughs and returns inside
    Is she thinking about the one she left behind?
    4 min
  • verona revisited
    Verona Revisited
    I was thinking about a summer moon
    I was remembering the bomb in Times Square
    I was recalling that when I was with you
    I didn’t really care
    I was ransoming your promise
    I was planning out our life
    I never stopped to ask myself
    If you wanted to be my wife
    Bought time
    With a rhyme
    Never even tasted
    Your lips upon mine
    Swore I was fine
    Drinking the world
    But a guy can get tangled
    When he falls in love with a girl
    Those days are long ago
    And the city doesn’t feel the same
    As when I was brand-new with you
    Like I never had a name
    The bench between the avenues
    The movie theater underground
    The way you made me go in search
    Of some divine, secret sound
    Chorus
    Would I sound ridiculous?
    To admit I pictured you with gray hair
    Was I mistaken when I concluded
    You never gave a damn
    Hey, we were young
    And things get messy
    Deep down I knew you were
    Too busy to miss me
    Chorus
    Well, what could be more romantic?
    Two city kids in love?
    In the first summer of a new decade
    Through the eyes of a wounded dove
    In the flashing lights
    Behind the homeless man in the park
    The Holy Spirit doesn’t help him
    And I nurse a broken heart
    5 min
  • Winding Down
    Winding Down
    So vast
    This Expanse
    The moon surface
    Of my mind
    Lamp-light frames the snow
    And we go
    Deeper into that gentle night
    Which is blind to the past
    The roles we’ve been cast
    The dreams that have been denied
    Chorus:
    Winding down
    The lights flicker in town
    Then they die
    They die
    They die
    I have no illusions
    I’m paid to entertain the delusions
    Of the hierarchies and their disaffected
    Sons
    Conditioned to think creative work
    Represents a nobler birth
    In our country of bibles and guns
    But I’m hardly cynical
    In fact, I’m quite equivocal
    About my replenishing of funds
    Chorus
    And your eyes are a respite
    Though we may fight
    About what you call my
    Callous attitude
    We have our bench and pond
    The graceful sense of being beyond
    Each other’s disappointment or gratitude
    Yet you feel so acutely my fear
    That I had a life that disappeared
    Like a flight lost at cruising altitude
    Chorus
    From where does this bitterness come?
    You live a dream, that’s supposed to be freedom
    Instead I’m the absence of joy
    In the state at large
    The teenage girl crying on her birthday
    Her businessman father with nothing to say
    The mother hardened by too many days in charge
    At least my students believe in writing
    And you leave me alone with my faulty wiring
    Like my father drinking alone in the garage
    Chorus
    Summertime now and I could leave
    Then its winter again and I’ve begun to grieve
    And in autumn my mother didn’t provide
    Any indication
    When you talk about next January
    My madness feels almost sanitary
    Maybe I just need a good, warm vacation
    You say I’m doing great, I’ve got it together
    I look like a knight in this coal black sweater
    Kiss me on the forehead
    Because we've arrived at our station
    6 min

About Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

From the publisher's feed

Matt Waters is a singer-songwriter from New York City. His songs range from character studies of the contemporary American to intimate explorations of love. A writer of fiction, he attempts to meld…