Loudon Wainwright III – Older Than My Old Man Now (Guitar)

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     If I remain still, if I'm alone and silent long enough to hear the sound of my own blood,

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or breathing, or digestion, above the rustling of leaves or the whirr of the refrigerator,

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my father is likely to turn up. He just arrives unbidden in the long-running film of my thoughts,

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like Hitchcock in his pictures, and he looks, for all these 40-plus years of disembodiment,

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much like himself: big and sandy-haired with freckles on the backs of his hands;

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perhaps a bit more diffident in the way he holds himself than I remember.

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He doesn't stay long, and as far as I can tell, his visits have no message.

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Yet even though years of therapy have led me to make the dark-whistling claim

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that he's finally dead and gone, my father, who died when I was seventeen,

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continues to be my principle ghost, a lifelong eminence grise, and only my own end will finish it

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Older than my old man now

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He died at 63, that's way too young

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Now you gotta feed me, now you gotta need me

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And I feel like a faithless son

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Sixty-four is awful old

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You know what can happen next

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Hey, I'm older than my old man ever was

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And I'm trying to keep it in context

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Yes, I'm older than my old man now

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His father died at 43

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From now on it's all gravy, I got twenty years more

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Maybe, I guess we'll have to wait and see

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I wasn't sure the day would come

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I've been living underneath his thumb

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But I don't feel so free, I don't even feel like me

                    B         E
Now that there's no race left to run

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Yeah, I'm older than my old man now

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I guess that means I kicked his ass

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But just 'cause you survive, that don't mean you feel alive

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And your demise will come to pass

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Nobody's sure exactly why

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Everybody's got to die

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Still it comes as quite a blow, know when you got to go

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And the world is gonna pass you by

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Yes, I'm older than my old man now

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Trying to keep it in context

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Not only older than my old man ever was

                                B    E
But I'm guilty to have outlived my ex