i’m happy just because.

Bright Eyes is singer-songwriter Conor Oberst and his revolving-door cast of collaborators, which has included longtime friends from the independent Saddle Creek Records collective as well as luminaries such as Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch. Oberst gained fame in the late Nineties as one of an ongoing string of artists proclaimed the “next Dylan” — a list of ragged-voiced singers and wordy songwriters that has also included Bruce Springsteen and Beck. What set Oberst apart from the others was his youth; he was just 15 when he began recording as Bright Eyes.
He is currently performing as Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (last i heard!)

At The Bottom of Everything

So there was this woman and
she was, uh, on an airplane and
she’s flying to meet her fiancé
sailing high above the–the largest ocean
on planet earth and she was seated
next to this man who, you know
she had tried to start conversations
an really–really the only thing
she heard him say was to order his bloody mary
and she’s sitting there and she’s reading
this really arduous magazine article about a
third world country that she couldn’t
even pronounce the–the name of and
she’s feeling very bored and very despondent
and–and then, uh, suddenly there’s this huge mechanical failure and one of the–the engines gave out
and they started just falling -an- thirty thousand feet
and the pilot’s on the microphone and he’s saying,
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Oh My God, I’m Sorry”
and apologizing and she looks at the man and she–and she says,
“Where are we going?” and he looks at her and he says,
“We’re going to a party, it–it’s a birthday party.
It’s your birthday party, happy birthday darling.
We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.”
And then, uh, he starts humming this little tune and–and, uh, it kind of goes like this, it’s kinda:

One, Two, One, Two, Three, Four
We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues from the books we have read
And to the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare.

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn’t dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing.

And it’ll go like this, alright
While my mother waters plants my father loads his gun.
He says, “Death will give us back to God,
just like the setting sun
is returned to the lonesome ocean.”

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea.
(Oh,)It was a wonderful splash.

We must blend into the choir, sing as static with the whole,
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul,
And to this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run.

We must hang up in the belfry where the bats in moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And (in)to the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.

And then we’ll get down there,
way down to the very bottom of everything
and then we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it, we’ll see it, we’ll see it.

Oh my morning’s coming back
The whole world’s waking up
Oh the city bus is swimming past.
I’m happy just because
I found out I am really no one.

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