Lyrics Okkervil River – External Actor

It’s all I’m looking for
These moments of opaque-eyed knocked-out rapture
Helpless as a cow for the capture
Chosen in a frozen instant

Far away from the scabbed-out moment
Far from the flick-flick-flick of the flatscreen
Far from the poison power of cash
Green cash reeking and heating the jetstream

Oh, the shop-sweet breath, she is my daughter
Daughter of the flashing instant
Daughter of watching «Daughters of Darkness»
On your parents’ couch with your high-school boyfriend

Spinning fevered in a hazy ditch
We daughters of long hard skids on the 10-speed
Daughters of July rips of the land speed
Semi-freckled eternal thrasher

Feather-haloed floating hair eye-flasher
Floating like a fire in the distance
Flashing like a flush to the skin
And whispering like the wind through the rushes

Oh no, external actor
External actor

You gotta hoist the high flag
You gotta learn how to hang with the freaks and the hicks
And the heat of the lot
You gotta learn what is and what is not
And you learn what isn’t is not a lot

To drain a tin beer
Streaming cold in the fields
Sun is up and the heat is relentless

Where the cops down the block
And they circle and they stop
And they circle and they stop
And they stop and they circle
And they stop, God help cause it’s a lot
And may God have mercy on the polyglot

Oh no, external actor
External actor

A million miles across, the starlight
Skip skip skip
A wide long curve of spacedust melt around a star
Keep shining in the cold
Keep shining in the dark

External actor

Neighbor-loving, brother-loving
Blanketing love of God above
Sigh of the river far from shore
Silence and the voice don’t speak any more
x7