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Week 70 // Good Man Trying

by Mount Everest

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about

Ever since I was little I’ve always kept sketchbooks and notebooks. I have a lot of them. I know it is wasteful, but until recently I never really filled them up all the way. I would skip pages and pages in order to give my ideas space from each other. When my ideas seemed to be on a totally different track, I would just start a new notebook. Looking through my old notebooks is sort of a treasure hunt. Pages will go by and by, and then down there in the corner on the back of a page there will be a sentence fragment underlined seven times as if it were the most important thought I could ever have. More pages will pass and suddenly there is a deluge of unfinished drawings and old song lyrics crammed together using both sides of every sheet until finally the sketches lose structure, the words trickle to a stop, the blank pages resume, and inevitably the notebook is abandoned for another one.

I love these old notebooks and have wanted to try to write about them for a long time. One thing that strikes me when I look through one of them is the difficulty that I have reconciling the author of the notebooks with the person that I am today. Sometimes he is so much more vital and creative than I feel. Other times he is enraged yet full of urgency. On occasion he is sensitive and vulnerable. Sometimes he is pretty impressive. Other times he is a hack. This song is about trying to figure out how this author relates to me. It is about trying to figure out if I’m still the person who left all of these artifacts behind. Incidentally, I never began to fill my notebooks up all of the way until I started this website. Week 70 appears about two thirds of the way through my second notebook since this project began. In both of these notebooks there is a tragic absence of drawings. Alas.

lyrics

Done with my old ways
I should have been a fighter

I used to write it down
I used to be a writer

And really nothing’s wrong
Just thumbed through my old notebooks
All the drawings and predictions I have made

A portrait on one side
A poem on the other
Contradicting one another on the page

Maybe I’m a bad man sleeping one off
And then maybe I’m a young man thinking he’s old again
Maybe I’m a good man trying
I’m eager, skipping right to the end

Down and out for days
Came home to wild flowers

I throw my days away
By filling all my hours

And maybe nothing’s changed
I read it in my notebook
That folks tend to remain the way they’ve been

A love on one side
A fighter on the other
They’ll have it out with one another yet again

Maybe I’m a bad man sleeping one off
And then maybe I’m a young man thinking he’s old again
Maybe I’m a good man trying
I’m eager, skipping right to the end

credits

released March 19, 2012

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about

Mount Everest Maine

I’ve been making up a new song every week since 2010.
Follow me on Instagram [mounteverestmusic] and explore more than 600 songs here.

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