Microphones In 2020 Chords

Playing the F#m chord as normally is suggested, but the best version of Dmaj7, D, and E to use are
ones that flesh out the chord most and use the most notes. The following way to play the chords is best if you
can do so:
 
Dmaj7:
      e|-2-
      B|-2-
      G|-2-
      D|-4-
      A|-5-
      E|xxx
 
D:    e|-2-
      B|-3-
      G|-2-
      D|-4-
      A|-5-
      E|xxx
 
E:    e|-4-
      B|-5-
      G|-4-
      D|-6-
      A|-7-
      E|xxx
 
The bulk of the song is more easily played with a capo on the 2nd fret, while using standard chord shapes for
Em, C, Cmaj7, and D to match the transposing. (Though I still recommend playing the E chord in the way I
provided above if possible). The first 26 minutes of the song can be played with the capo, and the only part
that really presents troubles is the section that goes "When I wake alone in the dark".
 
 
I've also edited the original C#m to be an E, as it sounds much closer to the recording. Thanks go out to Sam
on Collected Animals for pointing that out to me.
 
Changed one part on the bridge as well to more closely match what the recording sounds like. Most of the
chords are fairly standard in that section, but correct way to play the Gsus2 and Gmaj7sus2 chords are
as follows:
 
Gsus2:
          e|xxx
          B|xxx
          G|-2-
          D|-0-
          A|xxx
          E|-3-
 
Gmaj7sus2:
          e|xxx
          B|xxx
          G|xxx
          D|-4-
          A|-0-
          E|-3-
 
 
Leave a comment if you have questions or think that I've missed something or left something out.
 
 
 
[Instrumental intro]
 
F#m          Dmaj7 D (alternate between these two throughout the song; I will exclude Dmaj7 from here on out
for the sake of simplicity)
 
[Verse]
E         D
The true state of all things
D
I keep on not dying, the sun keeps on rising
D                                     F#m
I remember my life as if it's just some dreams that I don't trust
F#m
Burning off, layered thick
F#m
A cargo that I haul
F#m
Wounds and loves unresolved
E      D
I wake up with the sun in my eyes
D
The present moment tries
                                       F#m
But now I'm back where I was when I was 20
F#m
Crashing through salal alone and mumbling
F#m
One moment thinking I'm wise
F#m
And in the next one I writhe
                              D
Trying to re-remind myself of something learned then forgotten
D
Countless sunrises burying the things
D
I'd figured out the day before
D
Like that I probably won't find shelter
D
In the arms of any other person
F#m
Though I will try
F#m
Again I'll deny
F#m
The blanketing sky
F#m
The thing I just realised
F#m
For probably the millionth time
F#m
That walking with my knees trembling
E           D
Is the true state of all things
 
D
The true state of all things is a waterfall
D
With no bottom crashing end
D
And no ledge to plummet off
        F#m
Full of debris and flowers, never not falling
F#m
And in it we swim and fall
F#m
Sometimes beside, often apart
F#m
It's just chaos heaving
E      D
I wake up with the sun in my eyes
D
Beneath present moment skies
D
Squinting and wondering how I got here
 
Going through the contents of my backpack
F#m
Shaking out the dust to bring some empty space back
F#m
Filling a long merch table with artifacts
F#m
Looking back to see if I could draw a map
              E
That leads to now
 
  D
I remember where I was
 
D
When I was 20, or 17
D
Or 23
D
The disinterested sun would still rise every morning
D
Same as now
D
Dawn was loud
          F#m
I took my breakfast to the couch on the porch of the punk house
F#m
Coffee and low tide smell and my life stretching out
F#m
Spending hours each morning reading poems and staring off
F#m
And then snapping back to urgency
                                 E
I did my dishes and then I would sprint
       D
To the studio again
D
Spend all day and night digging in
D
Distorted bass, spliced tape
D
Singing lines like: "There's no end"
D
And "I won't look for you in my room"
D
About my friends
 
          F#m
I checked themicrophones@hotmail(dot)com like once a week
F#m
I would drive out to the ocean and not tell anybody
F#m
I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in a dollar theatre in Aberdeen
F#m
It was a rainy matinée, 2001, Sunday, March 18th
           E
And in the parking lot afterward
          D
For a few minutes in the rain
D
I stood glowing with ideas
D
Of what I might try to convey with this music
D
At that moment, my mind flashing like a blade
  F#m
A 22 year old in flip flops running around in an empty mall parking lot
F#m
Lost in a martial arts fantasy
F#m
It looks ridiculous now
                      E
But the truth is that alone there
D
Something was formed
D
The way they held themselves upright with tea in the opening scenes
D
A warm formality, spines straight and feet planted wide
D
Untipoverable like the bamboo'd undulating hills
        F#m
Walking slowly, making eye contact and gliding
F#m
The sound of empty wind when they sword fought weightless in the bamboo
F#m
With a purity of heart that transcends gravity
F#m
Leaping off the mountain into ambiguity
        E
Falling slow
       D
As the end credits rolled
D
I decided I would try to make music that contained this deeper peace
D
Buried underneath distorted bass
D
Fog imbued with light and emptiness
F#m
I kept on driving out to the ocean
F#m
It was raining so hard, I was wet wool caked with sand
F#m
I watched the dunes migrate slowly
 
 E    D          F#m
[Instrumental]
 
F#m
Lost mind in the tall grass
               E
And slowly the sound
   D
Of roaring waves returned
 
I rose
 
I returned to my station wagon with a wet face
 
Extravagant solitude invigorates
 
I drove back to Olympia clear headed
 
Temporarily
         F#m
And went back into the studio to resume whatever this thing is
 
This spooling out repetitive decades long song string
 
This river coursing through my life
 
These wild swipes at meaning
 
And now I circle back to look into the spring
 
           E
When I was 17
       D
It was 1995
 
I put the name "Microphones" on the tapes I would make late at night after work at the record store
 
I was already by then a couple years deep into this weird pursuit
                                                     F#m
Playing drums, copying lyrics out to hang them in my room
 
Until I started making my own embarrassing early tries
 
At this thing that sings at night above the house
 
Branches in the wind
        E
Bending wordlessly
            D
I wanted to capture it on tape
 
 
At first I called my recordings a different name
 
I called it "The Microphones" on the third cassette I made
 
Because I loved recording and the equipment seemed to be living
                       F#m
And it sang to me like static interference
 
From the small AM radio station down the street
 
Night in Anacortes in the mid-90s, oil tankers rumbling
 
I stayed late recording every night
 
Then I drove back to my parents house
 
My headlights through the trees along Heart Lake Road
 
Winding down the dark slope
 
        E
Beneath Mount Erie
      D
I was already who I am
 
 
A bottle of India ink, masking tape
 
Julie Doiron, Tori Amos, Cranberries, Sinéad O'Connor
 
Eric's Trip, Red House Painters, Sonic Youth, This Mortal Coil
F#m
Kurt Cobain had died
 
I had my driver's license and a girlfriend
 
And we'd cling to each other and dream that anything's permanent
 
Even back then
 
The beast of uninvited change
 
Insisted itself in
 
And look here, it still hangs
               E
But when I was young (Young)
       D
I'd go driving in the rain
 
      F#m
I saw Stereolab in Bellingham and they played one chord for fifteen minutes
 
Something in me shifted
 
I brought back home belief I could create eternity
 
Leaning the guitar up on the amp, taping down organ keys
 
Feeding back forever distorted waves of cymbals oceany
 
Slowly starting to try the move the words beyond
     E
Mere melancholy
     D
Into something that rings
 
True and old and useful hopefully
 
But when I was 17 I sang
 
In the moment hurt romantically
 
Grasping in the dark
 
       F#m
Like: "Shadows of the moon..."
 
"On the back of the car seat..."
 
"Where she sat once"
 
                         E                   D
It's not that bad, but I know I wanted to go deeper beneath pain
 
Beneath the human
 
 
Is it because my parents barely had any money
 
And preferred to leave the baby in the garden
 
That I grew up to blur the boundary
                                       F#m
Between myself and the actual churning dirt of this place?
 
That it feels normal to me to speak with the voice of weather
 
To build and move into a mirage
 
Made of songs cascading down a rock face in a homemade myth?
 
 
Even deeper back into the mist
           E
When I was 12 or 13
            D
On a family trip we hiked down a steep bluff to an ocean beach in whipping rain
 
My little brother's clothes got wet from playing in the winter waves
 
My parents made a fire of smokey driftwood and we huddled in
    F#m
And took his wet clothes off and held him naked above the flames
 
Smelling like smoke and salt on the drive home
                                E
Surely this experience explains something
      D
About whoever it was that sang all these songs
 
 
When you're younger every single things vibrates with significance
 
Gazing at the details in the artwork of a 7 inch
 
Devouring every word in a zine
 
There was barely internet
F#m
Meaning gets attributed wherever appetite bestows a thing
 
With resonating glowing ringing out through a life
 
What from these times do I carry with me still?
 
The things I survive return repeatedly
                      E      D
And I find again that I am a newborn every time
 
D      F#m  Bm
When I wake alone in the dark
Gsus2    Gmaj7sus2
Again, I swim
D   F#m      Bm
Out into the lake of the heart
Gsus2   Gmaj7sus2
And in
 
D      F#m    Bm    Gsus2   Gmaj7sus2
Mm...
 
D     F#m    Bm   Gsus2   Gmaj7sus2   (2x)
[Instrumental]
 
D
When I got back to Olympia from the ocean
 
I woke up early before dawn to start recording
 
The things I wanted to communicate had to do
 
With finding out how to break out from seeing
 
Only the inside of reflected ocean on the sky
 
F#m
It was early 2001 and I was almost 23
 
I'd finished recording The Glow Pt. 2
 
And I was always on tour or setting up a tour
 
Always running, voracious, thirsty
 
I'd go out to the lake with friends
 
Swim out to the middle and dive as far as I could
E                 D
Down to where the water gets cold, with open eyes
 
We'd go up on the roof at night and actually contemplate the moon
 
My friends and I just trying to blow each others' minds
 
Just lying there gazing, young and ridiculous
 
And we meant it, our eyes watering
F#m
The moon without abstraction
 
Then became a floating ball of a rock in outer space
 
Not a sticker or a light or a hole through black paper
 
We were making food and records and paintings
                                  E
And walking around beneath a real infinity
  D
I felt my size
 
 
That brief dissipating shock of looking into outer space
 
And seeing for just a second the bottomless distance pressed against my face
 
My little mind trying to write it down, zooming out
 
A faint yelp lost in a thunderstorm
F#m
Sufficiently small, thinking on the geologic scale
 
Making the voice of mountains
 
 
Reaching beyond my old concerns
                E     D
From when I was 17 in 1995
        E
All the layers of life
            D
Glint in my flashing eye
E
Simultaneously
           D
And at any moment we could die
            E
And so with urgency
         D
I keep a candle by my side
             E
And watch it disappear and glow
       D
At the same time
 
D
The weather moves across the land and doesn't have a reason
 
This rippling uncertainty beneath our bones
   E
Is still
         D
The true state of all things
 
 
It was at a truck stop in northern Italy
 
I was on tour playing drums and always wandering off alone
 
Squinting into the setting sun
 
My notebook filling
F#m
I was touring, living on an alternate plane within
 
But set apart from this life
 
Where people wake and work and don't self-uproot each day
 
Instead we passed through the towns like criminals
 
I was so gladly included in this rare world
 
This moving cult of groundlessness
 
Roomless, moving, awake
            E            D
Across that parking lot, recognition of the same
 
D
Another touring American band
 
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
 
All dressed in matching track suits and sunglasses
 
Grizzled and silly
 
A kind of Italian tour costume
 
Blending in but not really
 
And their playfulness with persona
 
Liberated me with permeability
            F#m
I thought, "Who is it even that sings
 
And who comes to life
 
Between the ears of the hearers in the rooms at night
 
And how can we all get deep?"
 
F#m
The packaging distracts from the nourishment it wraps
 
Fixation on the singer's face or on the band's name
         E                          D
Keeps us groveling and blind at the edge of a sea
D
Unsubmerged in the singing waterfall
 
Looking for a door into The Mansion
 
Taking this weird art project out into public
 
             F#m
Indulging in cultivated ambiguity
 
About participants' identities
 
Letting misperceptions hang
 
Because nothing's really true
 
With this imagined collective called "The Microphones"
 
I wrote about climbing up and dying
 
And then flying off as vultures
 
And a universe beyond
                E
Innocent of the real air of death
     D
That awaited down the path
 
D                                   F#m
At the very end of 2002, I took the Microphones name and crumpled it up
    D
And burned it in a cave on the frozen edge of northern Norway
         F#m
I made a boundary between two eras of my life
 
A feeble gesture at making chaos seem organized
 
The roaring river carves on, laughing at my efforts
 
While the idea of something called "Mount Eerie" engulfed me
    E
And time
D
Refuses to stop
 
D
Many, many years later
 
I heard "Freezing Moon" by Mayhem
 
And these words jumped out:
 D
"The cemetery lights up again"
 
"Eternity opens"
 
And I say:
 D
"Nothing stays the same
 
No one knows anything
 
Someone else lives in the house I used to live in
    E               D
And soon it will be torn down or burn"
 
And who would even want to live in a prolonged stagnation?
 
I am older now and I no longer feel the same way
 
That I did even five seconds ago
 
Watch me thrash around
           F#m
And try to gracefully allow the past to hang
 
Like: "no big deal"
 
 
Bands that break up and then reunite for money can do whatever they want
 
But it makes me glad that I am only this one contrary grump, impossible to reunite
E
Live
    D
The present moment burns
 
D
I will never stop singing this song
 
It goes on forever
 
I started when I was a kid and I still want to hold it lightly
 
This luxurious privilege to sit around
                               F#m
Frowning and wondering what it means
 
Playing with words
 
And trying to prove that names mean nothing
 
F#m
A finger
 
Pointed at the moon
 
Mistaken
 
For something shining and true
 
F#m
I never used to think I'd still be sitting here at 41
E                 D
Trying to breathe calmly through the waves
 
But nothing's really changed in this effort that never ends
 
D                               F#m
When I took my shirt off in the yard
 
I meant it, and it's still off
 
I'm still standing in the weather
 
Looking for meaning in the giant meaningless
 
Days of love and loss repeatedly waterfalling down
 
        E
And the sun
      D            D
Relentlessly rises still
 
 
It seems like I'll never not lose wisdom
 
Constantly relearning all the basics
 
Never recognizing any faces
F#m
Crawling out from under living layers
 
Squinting in the light of the earth bathing
 
Shaking off the weight of expectations
 
Plus all this nostalgia is embarrassing
     E      D
So I walk into an unknown room
 
Without a name
 
D
So what if I label this song "Microphones in 2020"?
 
I hope the absurdity that permeates everything joyfully
F#m
Rushes out and floods the room like water from the ceiling
 
Undermining all of our delicate stabilities
 
Admitting that each moment is a new collapsing building
 
Nothing is true
         E          D
But this trembling, laughing in the wind
 
D
Anyway, every song I've ever sung is about the same thing:
F#m
Standing on the ground looking around, basically
 
And if there have to be words, they could just be:
 
"Now only"
 
And
            E
"There's no end"
X