From the recording Twelve Children (CD-quality WAV)
After your great love affair is over? Then what? You bank the embers and slowly get your strength back. James Dean was written over the course of about five years. I started with this clear idea of Window Song's protagonist having lost the most beautiful part of his life, likely through his own weakness. He is figuring out what happens next, and building up the strength, maybe, to go find it. Somewhere, I picked up and image of sunlight flashing off of a spinning motorcycle wheel, and I realized he should be wrestling with his own broken ideas of manhood, and the journey to find himself again. I'm not sure I love the hero at this stage of the game, and maybe he hasn't learned his lesson yet. But, at least he's waking back up.
Lyrics
If I were James Dean I’d fade into the sun
The every race I run would be what’s left of me
If I were James Dean, I'd be up on that screen
And everything I dream would shine for everyone
Five miles west of some token town, I lay my broken body down
Bank the burning embers against the night
Ten miles east she lay down too, With some friend I thought I knew
Guess you could say this year worked out all right
And if I were James Dean, I wouldn't feel so mean
Let go of everything, and shine for everyone
If I were James Dean, the sun upon my wheels
The only light that's real would burn what's left of me
Ride out west and settle down, Find my fire in some fly-by town
Live my life like I’m always on the run
Find a friend who once was pretty, dance all night like we own the city
Laugh until we meet the morning sun
And if I were James Dean, I'd never be afraid
The debts I never paid would fade like memory
And If I were James Dean, the sun upon my wheels
The only light that's real would take what's left of me
I’m heavy now with age, and weary of this cage
that I’ve drawn
Sunset lit like fire rolling off the tires
But she's gone
If I were James Dean, the sun upon my wheels
The only light that's real would take what's left of me
And if I were James Dean, the deals I never made
The debts I never paid would fade like memory
They would fade