"Let's hire a whispering choir,
And sing all our problems 'till we're deaf,
'Till we're deaf,
Carry those notes with me,
Under our breath we'll scream like banshees,
Like banshees,
There's a hypothetical scenario,
Where us parenthetical folk are finally known,
I don't seem to take things well,
You don't seem to either,
Mercy street is a step past hell,
We don't have time for leisure,
Fish bowls on our heads,
Every day we're reaching for bubbles,
For bubbles,
Expecting a tidal wave,
Let's liquidate all of our instincts before it hits,
Before it hits,
There's a hypothetical scenario,
Where us parenthetical folk are finally known,
I don't seem to take things well,
You don't seem to either,
Mercy street is a step past hell,
We don't have time for leisure,"
Way, way before I knew that I had Bipolar I had a really extended depressive episode in highschool that left me pretty much unwilling to get off of the floor to even eat. I had a friend that I'd text as something to do whenever I felt incapable to do much else; something that helped things a lot for me. I wrote this song as a tribute to that friend for helping me through a rough time. The lyrics are inspired by reading the first few pages of a book written by Anne Sexton's daughter called 'Searching For Mercy Street' and the poem that it references. Amusing story: I wrote the chords on a car ride home from a trip in a note on my old phone before I worked them out on my keyboard with a few minor changes.
'Let's hire a whispering choir and sing all our problems 'till we're deaf' means to me a handful of things. If A: we hired the choir so we could sing over them, then we're just planning to be self indulgent with our sorrows and surrounding ourselves with more morose people to feel better about ourselves until we make ourselves deaf with how loud and obnoxious we're being. If B: we hired the choir because we're whisper-singers ourselves, then we're stuck singing our sorrows for eternity (assuming old age doesn't take hearing with it) in a vain quest to have it stop eventually from doing it enough. 'There's a hypothetical scenario where us parenthetical folk are finally known' means to me A: that there's some hypothetical world out there that makes all the stuff in the parentheses for people apparent, and B: that we're both people existing within the parentheses of society and most people don't think about us. 'Mercy street is a step past hell' means to me that, well, pain comes before mercy. Things are going to be terrible for a long time before they get better, but that's just how it is. 'Fish bowls on our heads' means to me that we're metaphorically drowning and gasping for air through life, 'Expecting a tidal wave, let's liquidate all our instincts before it hits' means to me that we've got to brace for an impact of things going wrong by going instinctually numb sometimes. I think that about covers it.