Playlist: I Only Come Alive in Dreams
“I Only Come Alive in Dreams” is the one completely new track featured in the latest digital-only collection we’ve just released, Ce N‘est Pas Un Album: Hoards of Slaughter Sheep. It will eventually join the SURVIVING THE JONESES album when we have completed remaking all the old tracks from that collection. Before then, of course, we will also add the band members (right now it’s pretty much just me on there).
You’ll notice that the second half of the new collection’s title (Hoards of Slaughter Sheep) is derived from the line “hordes of slaughter sheep” in this track. Also you’ll note that I used a different form of the word (hoard vs horde), because the collection of songs is a collection (a hoard) versus a crowd (a horde). We English majors delight in such linguistic serendipities.
Anyway, HERE IS A PLAYLIST of songs that help contextualize the sonic palette and esprit de lyric of this song. Below, you will find both the playlist’s contents and then the lyrics to the song.
The Random Hubiak/I Only Come Alive in Dreams
MGMT/Time to Pretend
M83/Midnight City
Passion Pit/Take a Walk
The Blue Nile/A Walk Across the Rooftops
Florence + The Machine/Shake It Out
Lazyear/I Guess It’s Not the End of the World
BUHU/Kids
Ásgeir/I Know You Know
Laurie Anderson/Life on a String
Radiohead/True Love Waits
Lindsey Buckingham/Gone Too Far
Elvis Costello/The Other Side of Summer
Rusted Root/Food and Creative Love
Morrissey/Interesting Drug
Eurythmics/Power to the Meek
Band of Horses/Casual Party
Aimee Mann/Long Shot
Lindsey Buckngham/End of Time
Radiohead/You and Whose Army?
Björk/Declare Independence
Lorde/Royals
Prince/Sign O’The Times
Daft Punk/Revolution 909
Heaven 17/We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thing
Challenger/I Am Switches
Arcade Fire/Everything Now
The Killers/Be Still
Passion Pit/The Reeling
I ONLY COME ALIVE IN DREAMS (Lyrics)
Hell is fluorescent lights and 4 x 4 x 4 foot walls
We look the other way and we ignore the writing on the stalls
These servile woods are thick with wolves in woolen three-piece suits
Who’ll turn on dimes and turn on you: to cull your meal, press execute.
I walk the waking day asleep, turn slowly, cog in the machine,
One of the hordes of slaughter-sheep. I only come alive in dreams.
My eyes, wide open, never see in blinding day these tragedies
In dark and night is where I keep my hope alive, only in dreams.
Heaven’s just a mirage of larger pens and greener fields
Of stock options and dividends, of promises that never yield
The picket fence, two-car garage, the in-law suite, the cul de sac.
Indoctrinated flocks defend these beasts of prey who stake our lack.
We walk the waking day asleep, turn slowly, cog in the machine,
One of the hordes of slaughter-sheep. I only come alive in dreams.
My eyes, wide open, never see in blinding day these tragedies
In dark and night is where I keep my hope alive, only in dreams.
We don our blinders willingly and walk the narrow corridors
Flash our executioners sympathetic smiles
Calculate the probability statistically to ensure
The next one that we walk will not be our final mile.
But when the day burns out we dream of flying, floating, soaring, never dying
An underworld of secret lives to keep the underclass alive
The masters are all soundly sleeping
Unaware the flocks that they’re keeping
Walk the waking day asleep, turn slowly, cog in the machine,
One of the hordes of slaughter-sheep. We only come alive in dreams.
Our eyes, wide open, never see in blinding day these tragedies
In dark and night is where we keep our hopes alive, only in dreams.
And one day when we all awake the ghosts asleep in this machine
The ground will swell, the earth will shake herself out of this waking dream.
The wolves will tremble where they stand, the braying choir no more to dream
Of terrors that devour their days, we will not only live in dreams.