Vic Chesnutt - Distortion

Everybody lies
What's the big deal?
It's impossible to know what is and isn't sealed
Faith is the lies we tell and tell ourselves
Life is the lies we tell everybody else
History is a daisy chain of lies
Humans love distortion
Public record is a poetic device
Blown way out of all proportion

(spoken:) i look at the color red, and say 'red'.
Everyone else looks at the color and says 'reddish'.
We all say i don't believe it til i see it,
But so much happens between light in the eye and assimilation of that data in the consciousness.
A symbol beam bending, or …. or experienced anomalies
Or electrical distortion along the optic nerve.
But more mysterious are the magnetic osmotics
Sloshing around inside the hi-falutin grey filter switchboard that is brain.
Miles of rough road!
Vital baggage is tossled gore, tossed off the truck
Everyone sees it in a certain way, everyone knows it as only they can know it,
And everyone has things that only they can see
Understanding breaks down,
Gulfs in agreement develop
….(old greekdoms??) crumble
We all define the stuffs and stages of our worlds with terse tags and populist generalities.
We all know a rose, is sometimes a rose
But what fucking color is it? what fucking color is it
Everybody fibs, myths are entertained
Delusions are encouraged and/or covertly ingrained
Faith is the lies we tell and tell ourselves
Life is the lies we tell everybody else
Common knowledge is a daisy chain of lies
Humans love distortion
Civilization is costume revery, culture by coercion
Everybody lies