Let the Truth Sting

Once in a while, as song reaches through, either consciously or subconsciously and touches me. This song is one.

A little back story, I was recently turned on to singer-songwriter David Gray by one of my shipmates back on Lincoln. I liked the music superficially for a while, but something began to draw me in. I am not sure if it was the voice, the writing or the lyrics, slowly working their way into my consciousness, but David Gray touches me in a place that few artists ever have.

This song I am posting here, as he sings it on the album, is one such piece of music. It speaks to me of frustration, pain, reality, life. It is dark, his voice cracks and rakes like gravel as he sings it, and it just a very real, very heartfelt song. It just hits me in that way some songs, paintings, stories or photos reaches into my very core and touches me.

You can't hear it, unless you find it and purchase it, but you can read it, and, hopefully, through my enthusiasm for this amazing artist, I can turn YOU on to something very special. Let the truth sting.

Let the Truth Sting
By David Gray
A Century Ends, 1993

The hour is out of joint
Black sun has arisen
And the river of words
Is flowing on through
The cages of tradition
They're handing out emptiness
We'll take it, cos it's given
Free with this plastic innocence
And these standards of living

And questions, lighted questions
Burnin' holes into my head
Hanging like shadows o'er the sun
Staring out like the eyes of the dead
And sometimes my soul flickers
When the wind of change blows cold
Over the mire of repetition
Down the corridors of rigmarole

What I say, what I think
What I put down in ink
I'm only tryin' to find a way to understand
And I mean no harm
I'm just searching for calm
In the storm of mankind

And do you find it there
In the sea of faces
That drowns you every day
Or in the silence and rubble and empty spaces
Where children and rottweilers play
Is it buried in the praise
Given so cheap
With a meaningless movement of the jaws
In the looking glass
That flatters you
Or in the rattle of hollow applause

Blind circles, moon and sun
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting

From the hub to the limit
Through the urban hollows
Out into the poles of the extreme
To echo through the numbness
Of these godless minutes
In the shadow of delusion's regime

And here watching the night
It opens like a flower
The days start to rust
Time pound a silent hammer
On this empire of dust
And I'm thinking about the bullet
And the TV screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist
And if we're searching for peace
How come we still believe
In hatred as the catalyst

Oh, through the borderline
In front and behind
One pain endin', while another began
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting, yeah,
Let the truth
And I feel it from the pit of my stomach
Into the ditch of my mind
Inside the chambers of my heart
As I stare half blind
At these walls of cardboard
At this space that I've rented
At your beauty that is crumbling
Though you try so hard to prevent it

Whoa, on and on
Body willing, mind undone
One pain ending while another begins
Lies, ruin, disease
Into wounds like these
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting
Let the truth sting