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Here's How It Goes (Life on the Mississippi)

from Songs About Books (selections from the Bushwick Book Club) by Sweet Soubrette

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about

Inspired by Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, performed live in the Bushwick Book Club at Housing Works Bookstore, NYC, on November 28, 2012.

www.bushwickbookclub.com

lyrics

If you want to be a pilot
Better learn more than you ought to be
Allowed to know
Learn every town and every island
Every point and every crossing
Every day or so
Keep an everlasting measure
Of the banks of the river
Twelve hundred miles
Alluvial the river changes overnight
It’s never the same river twice

And it all looks so different from up here
Can’t recall the last time that I let go of the wheel
Now when the sun sets I don’t see the blood and gold
Mastery costs beauty that’s the way it goes
Here’s how it goes

To get this river set to heart
You have to know it just like ABC
Read it like the morning paper
And learn to understand all that you see
And it’s hard to imagine that a day will come
When you’ll know what it means
When you’ll shut your eyes
And trace it from St. Louis
Down to New Orleans

Here’s how it goes

You’ll recognize shoal water and the countless crossing marks
You’ll know the waterway’s shape on gray nights and in the dark
And every shift it makes oh yes you’ll be one step ahead
You’ll pilot when you’re sleeping you’ll pilot when you’re dead

And it all looks so different from up here
Can’t recall the last time that I let go of the wheel
Now when the sun sets I don’t see the blood and gold
Mastery costs beauty that’s the way it goes
Here’s how it goes

credits

from Songs About Books (selections from the Bushwick Book Club), released August 10, 2013
Ellia Bisker - vocals + ukulele

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about

Sweet Soubrette Brooklyn, New York

Sweet Soubrette features the songwriting, vocals and ukulele of Ellia Bisker, whose dark, edgy "existential indie rock" has won fans' hearts and critical praise since the release of debut album Siren Song. She is joined by a talented backing band, often featuring as many as 8 musicians onstage. Sweet Soubrette's fourth album, Big Celebrity, was released in 2016. ... more

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