Eden

"I started writing this song (surprisingly) on a drive through Indiana. Pretty country. It's the story of someone trying to start over and let life be simple again--or simple for the first time-- maybe my thoughts on the American dream and how it seems to apply sparingly to women."

24 acres of Indiana farmland, airstream trailer
living in the heartland
a little ways west of where the day is born
I put 200,00 miles on this Japanese car
mechanic says it's dying now don't take it very far
but I love to go out driving
watch the sun melt on the corn
we're living in the heartland, somewhere between the mountains and the shore

at school the kids are learning about Christopher Columbus
the names of all his ships, how to use a compass
and I wish that it could stop there
I wish there was a way to keep 'um young
'Cause when I think about him now, he must have been all shaky handed
delusions of grandeur and lines in the sand
and a look in his eye of a man who has been at sea too long
trying to find his legs and afraid to admit he might be wrong

It's what I don't know that makes this living easy
the more I learn the more it brings me to my knees and I say
please
let me back inside the garden
I won't eat anything that's fallen from that goddamn tree

24 acres of Indiana farmland, used to be 100
but grandpa lost a card game
we moved back here from Boston cause I lost my job and this is where I'm from
and the kids seem pretty happy, they don't miss their dad too much
I can't answer all their questions but they never lack for love
that's what I tell my mother when she calls
"now don't you worry about us"
we're living in the heartland and we're learning how to let that be enough

chorus

We don't keep a TV cause the news is always bad
and it teaches us to want all the things we'll never have
and there's always someone getting hurt cause someone else was feeling
too let down
one of these nights I'm gonna go out to the crossroads
see who's buying
and I'll tell him just to go on home
I'll look him in the eye and say "you don't scare me now"
since the bottle took my baby and the banker took my house
we're living in the heartland surely somewhere here is where the heart is found

chorus