The Dream's in the Ditch

Listen while you read:  Deer Tick

Well, the dream's in the ditch
Now the kids are all pissed
But it's not new to hate what they make you do

First they pull all your teeth
Then they'll want you to eat
Well, get over it, kid, you don't want any part of it

But it's not the way you can't afford your time
Or the envy of the friends you've left behind
So whenever you go, they can have everything you lose

Is this it? This is it

So they paid you to scream
But it buried your dreams
So you wait for the pain that will send you to sleep again

Now you walk with your wolves
Like you got nothing to lose
Act like you don't care while you pray for a cross to bear

But it's not the way you can't afford your time
Or the envy of the friends you've left behind
So whenever you go, they can have everything you lose

This is it. Is this it?

~  Ian O'Neill (for Deer Tick)

I had lunch the other day with my friend Allison. She'd just come from the doctor's office where she'd had an engorged deer tick removed from her arm. We had a glass of wine with lunch, her last one before her three-week antibiotic cycle. Needless to say, "deer tick" sparked a song memory for me, so here it is. This song appears on Deer Tick's 2013 effort, Negativity.

Deer Tick is a Rhode Island band. Years ago, front man John McCauly found a deer tick on his scalp after a camping trip somewhere in the forests of Indiana. He thought the name "Deer Tick" sounded cool. The actual deer tick? Not so much. For any of you uneducated about things-to-be-feared in the Northeast, deer ticks carry Lyme disease, a condition that can be terrible for some victims of the tick bite. If anyone should have Lyme disease, it's me. I've pulled many a tick off my body over the years. I've even gone to the emergency room to have one removed from my eyelid. But, god willin' and the creek don't rise, I have yet to come down with Lyme disease. I do know several people who have suffered terribly from the disease. It's a real thing.

As for the song, make sure you listen to it, if for no other reason than to catch that piano solo in the middle. I find it interesting that the song sounds so upbeat, but the lyrics are kind of a downer. Songwriter and guitar player Ian O'Neill had this to say: "After the song was written, I started to realize what I was writing about: both the despair and the resilience you develop as a touring musician and how that can parallel all the basic situations in the song."

The dream's in the ditch. I feel that way often these days. All the gains that were made in terms of the environment, gender equality, healthcare, education, global peace . . . Those gains are being systematically overturned by an administration that is lacking in compassion and common sense. Is this it? No, it's worse. The very idea that the people in charge have conspired with a hostile foreign government in order to gain power is abhorrent. Negativity? Is there anything left to feel positive about?

This is it.