Let's Not Shit Ourselves (to Love and to Be Loved)

Here we go
 Can I get a goddamn timpani roll
 To start this goddamn song?
 Tonight
 Here's a goddamn song
 For all you goddamn people
 ♪
 Well, the animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness
 A baby cries hard in an apartment complex
 As I pass in a car buried under the influence
 The city is driving me out of my mind
 I've seen a child, he's caught in the sad trap of gravity
 He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree
 And lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity
 Next time he will not aim so high
 Yeah, next time neither will I
 Now a mother takes loans out, sends her kids off to colleges
 Her family is reduced to names on a shopping list
 While a coroner kneels beneath a great wooden crucifix
 He knows there's worse things than being alone
 And so I've learned to retreat at the first sign of danger
 I mean why wait around if it's just to surrender?
 And ambition, I've found, can lead only to failure
 I do not read the reviews
 No, I am not singing for you
 ♪
 Well, I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well
 And I would throw my whole billfold if I thought it would help
 With all these wishes I make, I should buy something real
 At least a telephone call home
 Well, my teachers, they built this retaining wall of memory
 All those multiple choices I answered so quickly
 And got my grades back and forgot just as easily
 But at least I got an A
 And so I don't have them to blame
 Well, I should stop pointing fingers
 Reserve my judgment of all those public action figures
 The cowboy presidents
 So loud behind the bullhorn, so proud they can't admit
 When they've made a mistake
 While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen
 He knows he don't have to say it so it
 It don't bother him
 Honesty, accuracy is just popular opinion
 And the approval rating is high
 And so someone's gonna die
 Well, ABC, NBC, CBS - bullshit
 They give us fact or fiction, I guess an even split
 And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment
 We're still the pawns in their game
 As they take eye for an eye
 Until no one can see
 We must stumble blindly forth repeating history
 Well, I guess we all fit into your slogan on that fast food marquee
 Red blooded, white skinned, oh and the blues
 Oh and the blues, I got the blues, that's me!
 (That's me!)
 That's me! Woah!
 ♪
 I awoke in relief
 My sheets and tubes were all tangled
 Weak from whiskey and pills in a Chicago hospital
 And my father was there in a chair by the window
 Staring so far away
 I tried talking, just whispered
 "So sorry, so selfish"
 He stopped me and said, "Child, I love you regardless
 There is nothing you could do that would ever change this
 I'm not angry, it happens...
 But you just can't do it again"
 So now I try to keep up
 I've been exchanging my currency
 While a million objects pass through my periphery
 Now I'm rubbing my eyes
 'Cause they're starting to bother me
 I've been staring too long at the screen
 But where was it when I first heard
 That sweet sound of humility?
 It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody
 How grateful I was then, to be part of the mystery
 To love and to be loved
 Let's just hope that is enough