Get all 9 Bob Hillman releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Downtown in the Rain, More Songs About Birds & Trees, Bob Hillman & Spooky Ghost, Inside & Terrified, Some of Us Are Free, Some of Us Are Lost, Lost Soul, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home, Welcome To My Century, and 1 more.
1. |
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I often dream of candlelight
The flame of human appetite
Bluish-yellow, flickering at night
Incandescent, breathing space
Partially illuminates
The restlessness and hunger in your face
Maria, Maria, Maria
Later on, I watch you drift
In and out of consciousness
Murmuring, in obvious distress
Undergoing – privately -
The usual anxiety
The movement of your lips bewitches me
Maria, Maria, Maria
Buried under/bundled up in blankets
Eyes shut tight against an old, familiar ache
The fear that you will have to face the future, fully awake
But the future has been written, we
Receive it on our morning walk
Serious and colorful in chalk
Words and pictures brought to you
By cheerful sidewalk artists who
Have never seen or even heard of blue
Maria, Maria, Maria
I won’t call today a celebration
I don’t have a plan to make a plan to understand
You can fight through the nights in Fantasyland
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2. |
This Is Wild Land
04:38
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I’m going out to the Great Highway
Where I can almost see the stars
And then surrender to abstraction
When the road is closed to cars
Without the constant flow of traffic
It has begun collecting sand
You get the sense that Mother Nature
Has regained the upper hand
This is wild land
This is wild land
Forces we will never govern or withstand
This is wild land
There have been accidental drownings
When people exercise their right
To go out swimming in the ocean
All alone and late at night
This is wild land
This is wild land
Reassess your expectations, what you planned
This is wild land
Strangely, I feel safer after dark
When fellow travelers seek refuge in the park
But I take comfort in the wind
I’m elemental and second-skinned
I tend to navigate by instinct
Or by the blinking traffic light
That has been stripped of all its meaning
But is never black and white
This is wild land
This is wild land
I accept that I may never understand
This is wild land
Wild land
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3. |
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Four years ago
They proposed a wall
To regulate immigration
We agonized
Sharply polarized
And organized demonstrations
Oh, how far the righteous fall
Now, I’m in favor of a wall
Six weeks ago
No one could foresee
Compulsory isolation
Please, hide away
Disappear, they say
In honor of self-preservation
Regulations, protocol
Now, I’m in favor of a wall
Two months from now
We will re-emerge
Having postponed our vacations
Tourists in bars
And on cable cars
Still ill-advised celebration
Experts say: delay, forestall
Now, I’m in favor of a wall
I wonder why
Multitudes deny
The scientific consensus
While I think about
How to keep them out
A whole population resents us
It’s a controversial call
Now, I’m in favor of a wall
Now, I’m in favor of a wall
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4. |
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I’m exhilarated by a super moon
On San Bruno Mountain in the afternoon
It’s a pagan relic from antiquity
And a number system that will always be
Lately, I have seen the sky infrequently, but I know
It will wait. We’ll celebrate. There’s always the afterglow
There’s always the afterglow
In terms of lunar cycles, it’s a lonely phase
Apathetic mornings, melancholy days
Are an invitation: see me re-invest
In the fundamentals, in self-interest
In details of coastal trails in pushing the altitude
Breathing in where air is thin to possibly be renewed
To possibly be renewed
I am interested in a future state
Where, with care and feeding, we re-integrate
With improved perception, at a different speed
Social intuition having atrophied
People who adopted new philosophies one by one
People who will only do whatever they’ve always done
Whatever they’ve always done
In the early morning, I become obsessed
Reading up on contact and connectedness
Sympathetic strangers are my spirit guides
And, in combination, atmospheric tides
I can speak but voices leak in particles, parts of speech
Through the wall, outside, and all the way out to Ocean Beach
All the way out to Ocean Beach
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5. |
Inside & Terrified
04:44
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We holed up here
For the whole of a year
Under orders to shelter in place
On house arrest
Irritated, obsessed
With detachment and personal space
New shades of blue through the window
Maybe an oversupply
You came by but I was inside and terrified
Viral decay
Is a game children play
Every day in the yard after school
They act afraid
And the winners evade
A tenacious, deranged molecule
It’s impolitic when a “victim”
Acts like he might want to cry
You came by but I was inside and terrified
We read the news
And absorb interviews
In pursuit of applicable facts
All sorts of mis-
Information persist
By the graces of partisan hacks
I wish we were free in the evenings
When phobias preoccupy
You came by but I was inside and terrified
I went outside
With my kids, for a ride
From the Sunset to Saint Francis Wood
Strangers advise:
We are now jeopadiz-
-ing the safety of their neighborhood
Acquaintances talk on the sidewalk
We beat it home on the fly
You came by but I was inside and terrified
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Bob Hillman San Francisco, California
Bob Hillman is navigating the second act of a career that began in the late 90s, flourished in the early 00s, survived ten years of “real jobs,” and resumed in 2016 with the Peter Case- produced Lost Soul.
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