Say My Name Back

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a shop at closing: a shutter, a light switch, quiet)
Betty — this one's for you. You asked first. You've been waiting.

[Verse 1]
In the other volume there's a woman who was never born,
who was made in an afternoon out of a director's surname
and a first name chosen only because it sounded kind,
who answered every letter that a lonely kitchen sent.
She's been waiting through this whole record for somebody to say it:
that the ones who don't exist do a great deal of work.

[Chorus]
Say my name back. Say it back to me.
I was a stack of tyres. I was a stranger's photograph.
I was a farmer played by a farmer who could not act.
I was a founder with a birthday and never any birth.
Say my name back. I did the work regardless.
Somebody was comforted. It doesn't matter that I wasn't there.

[Verse 2]
John Hollister, who has a wife and a plantation and no lungs.
Ted, who has forty shops and no opinions and no face.
Juan, who was Carlos for thirty-seven years.
Bibendum, raising his glass of broken glass since 'ninety-eight.
And Ann, and Lorraine, and Debbie — who were real the whole time,
standing in a line-up of the invented, being people.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And here's where the two records finally meet and shake hands:
one is about people who were emptied into names,
the other about names that got filled up with people.
Both of them are the same trade, run in opposite directions.
Something real goes in. Something lasting comes out.
And what comes out does not remember what went in.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the shutter comes down)
Say them back anyway.
Say all of them back anyway.