The Connector Musical Album Lyrics

[ETHAN]
What looks at first to be remarkable, bizarre
Will soon reveal itself to be part of a pattern
And we who stand outside identify the history
In the seemingly unprecedented thing

[ROBIN]
A young man dreamed
In 1944
Of a magazine that spoke for his generation
And two years later
From a townhouse in Hell's Kitchen
Issued issue number one of The Connector

A young man dreamed
In the middle of the war
Of a monthly source of truth and investigation
So Aubrey Bernard
Twenty-five years old
Rolled the dice and rolled the presses on The Connector

And the whole world changed
And everything stayed the same
The whole world changed
And everything, everything, everything stayed the same
Circulation boomed with international acclaim
And everything, everything stayed the same

A young man dreamed
In his dorm room up at Harvard
That he'd someday write for his favorite publication
So Conrad O'Brien
As of 1962
Sent dispatches from Saigon for The Connector

A young man learned
As he grew to middle age
How to navigate the constant exasperation
And so Conrad O'Brien
In 1981
Became the next editor-in-chief of The Connector

And the whole world changed
And everything stayed the same
The whole world changed
And everything, everything, everything stayed the same
New subscriptions dwindled and new competition came
And everything, everything stayed the same

[CONRAD]
We talk a lot about the truth around here
The truth is not just something verified—
The truth is palpable, tangible, real
The truth is not about the facts—
Forgive me
The facts can always be manipulated
Arranged, massaged—
We are not purveyors of facts
We are tellers of truth

So here's a truth: For fifty years we've stood on this foundation
Truth: In fifty years, we've never been outrun
Now, in partnership with this great corporation
We are resolute, determined as we have been from day one
We are fighting now to honor what our founder would have done
In 1946, and '56, and '66, and '76
And '86, and '96, we've stood firm while
The whole world changed
The whole world changed
The whole world changed
The truth will stay the same

[MURIEL, spoken]
To the next fifty years!

[ROBIN]
A young man dreamed
In his bedroom in New Jersey
Of his name on a byline in The Connector...

[ETHAN]
What looks at first to be remarkable, bizarre
Will soon reveal itself to be part of a pattern
And we who stand outside identify the history
In the seemingly unprecedented thing

And that was Aubrey Bernard
April 7th, 1958
In The Connector

And you can see yourself
A fragment of, a fragment of
And you can see yourself reflected
So you can see yourself
A fragment of, a fragment of
Reflected...

I type a sentence
And negotiate the space between
The thing that was and how it is remembered
I type a sentence
And I influence the way
We understand what is the future or the past

If there's a place in this world
Any place where I'm supposed to be
It's The Connector

And you can see yourself
A fragment of, a fragment of
And you can see yourself reflected

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
Reflected

[OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Reflected

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
So you can see yourself
A fragment of

[ETHAN]
A fragment of
Reflected

[ENSEMBLE]
And you can see yourself
A fragment of

[ETHAN]
A fragment of

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
And you can see yourself reflected

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
Reflected

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
So you can see yourself
A fragment of, a fragment of
Reflected

[ETHAN]
Reflected

[ROBIN]
I'm watching you
I'm watching you map the boundaries
Watching you tilting back and forth
Getting the needle to point to north

I'm watching you
I'm watching you case the property
Gently assessing which doors are blocked
Finding which windows are left unlocked

I'm learning too—
Seeing the way you dare to leap
Marveling how you always keep
The total blueprint in view
I'm watching you

I'm watching you
I'm watching the way you ride the wave
Watching the way that you chase the thread
Watching the way that you stay ahead

Now that was new
Now that was a trick that I'd never seen
Just when I thought you'd lost the plot
You call back a clue that we all forgot

The follow-through
The left-handed volley across the net
The flip where you don't even break a sweat
Could I ever do what you do?
I'm watching you
I'm watching you
I'm watching you...

[ETHAN, spoken]
On a Friday night earlier this summer
I entered a bar on a quiet street in West Village
Where a boisterous crowd of NYU students surrounded a small table
Upon which lay a battle-scarred Scrabble board
Seated at the table was Waldo Pine
The village's own Sultan of Scrab
Unshaved, unsober and allegedly undefeated
I sat down across the table from Waldo
Laid down my obligatory twenty-dollar bill
Fished seven wooden tiles out of a greasy bag
And asked him how he did it

[WALDO, laying down tiles]
One, two, three, four, five
"Jarrah"
I like to start with a word
That's probably something you've never heard
Now you're off your game
'Cause I start with "Jarrah"

[WALDO, spoken]
Forty-eight points
You've got thirty seconds

[WALDO]
Ooh! What's this comin' down the chute?

[WALDO & ETHAN]
"Haven"

[WALDO]
Aw, that's cute
See, I'm in your head
So sayonara

[WALDO & ETHAN]
Fifteen by fifteen

[WALDO]
Is the borders of my land

[WALDO & ETHAN]
Fifteen by fifteen

[WALDO]
Is the world I understand
So come on in, take a look around
Relax, kick off your shoes—
But there's one seven-letter word
That you are never gonna use!

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Could be my middle name if my middle name weren't Dan

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
You say, "You can't do that"
But I do that because I can

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Set up the target, put on the blindfold, I won't miss

[WALDO & ETHAN]
Now you might have seen another boy do it before
But he didn't do it like this

[WALDO lays down seven tiles on the board.]

[WALDO, spoken]
"Assayed"
That's a bingo, all seven letters, fifty point bonus
Plus I turned "haven" into "shaven"
Don't make it so easy for me, little bro

[WALDO]
Some folks, this would be too loud
But I do better inside a crowd
'Cause I like that noise and the validation
Look at you, you're trying to think
Your vocabulary pushed to the brink
But you can't avoid the humiliation

[WALDO & ETHAN]
Bingo by bingo

[WALDO]
I lay you frat boys low

[WALDO & ETHAN]
I know the lingo

[WALDO]
You Princeton pricks don't know
They said there's a boy in a piano bar
Playin' Scrabble and getting how rich?
Maybe you heard I'm a little nerd
Well, this is what a nerd looks like now, bitch!

[CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
I'm a fighter! Touch my mitre! Kiss my ring!

[CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Use your dictionary, it's not gonna change a thing

[CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Meaning "victory"
That's my "ave atque vale"-dictory
It's not a trick to me
Words just stick to me
You look sick to me
Come on, children, sing

[CROWD]
Woah

[WALDO]
All the answers are floating

[CROWD]
Woah

[WALDO]
In a grid above the grid

[CROWD]
Woah

[WALDO]
You can't take them like candy

[CROWD]
Woah

[WALDO]
You just breathe them in like clouds

[WALDO & ETHAN]
I was reading the Bible
And I thought, "How lonely we are"
I thought how lonely we are
I thought how lonely we are

[ETHAN, spoken]
In my family, I had always been the killer Scrabble player
But after ten minutes
Waldo was ahead of me by well over three hundred points

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
It's what I dress in in Manhattan or Macao

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Hope you enjoyed the lesson
I'll take that twenty now

[WALDO & CROWD]
Success!

[WALDO]
Not to ramble like Joseph Campbell
But follow my bliss

[WALDO & ETHAN]
You might have seen another boy do it before

[WALDO, ETHAN & CROWD]
But he didn't do it
Didn't do it
Didn't do it
No, he didn't do it like this!

[ETHAN, spoken]
Two weeks later, I brought some friends down to the Village
But when we got to the bar, the door had been padlocked
And there was a real estate sign hanging in the window
As we walked away, my eye caught something in a pile of leaves
To my surprise, it was a single wooden tile
And when I flipped it over, like a private inscrutable message:
The letter H
Four points

[WALDO]
Incidentally, "Jarrah" is a tree

[CROWD]
Ah

[ROBIN]
Everyone's an asshole in Texas
Everyone pretends to be so polite
But inside they're all seething
As long as they're breathing
They're breathing vindictive oxygen
"Someone's gonna make us give back all this shit we stole!"
That's the refrain in their soul

Everyone's an asshole in Texas
Especially Dallas—
The sculptured hair and those stupid hats
And the acres of denim
And smiles fillеd with venom
And endlessly nurturеd grievances

And no one's gonna speak the truth
In a lying town
In a crooked place
No one's gonna speak the truth
When they know it doesn't matter
And so I came to New York

[ETHAN]
Everyone's a scumbag in Jersey
Everyone's exactly as loud and dumb
As the movies portray them
Should anyone pay them attention
They puff up like bullfrogs
Go and wear your muscle shirts and mullets with pride
'Cause you've got nothing real inside

[ETHAN & ROBIN]
And no one's gonna speak the truth
In a place like that
Where it won't get heard

[ETHAN]
No one's gonna speak the truth
When the fakes get fatter and fatter

[ETHAN & ROBIN]
No, no one's gonna speak the truth
Not a single phrase
Not an honest word
No one's gonna speak the truth
When they know it doesn't matter

[ROBIN]
And so I came to New York

[ETHAN]
And so we came to New York

[ETHAN & ROBIN]
Mmm
Ooh

[ETHAN]
The thing of it is, Brian
You don't know how it's gonna end when you start
The words pour out of you like water
And you let 'em flow

This city is a current—
You plug in and it drives you, it drives you
The story chases you no matter where you go

And someone had to write it
Someone had to capture it
Puzzle out the how and why
Somehow I could see the
Something in the shadow
But let me just assure you
I wasn't planning to be
The voice of my generation

Before you're really ready
You've become part of a bigger conversation
You're a landmark on the landscape
When you've barely settled in

There are certain expectations
You have to insulate yourself from the clamor
You have to shut it down
Or you get deafened by the din

But I was here to write it
I was here to capture it—
Twenty-four or twenty-five
I was on the edge of
More than I could handle
But even from the outset
I've never wanted to be
The voice of my generation

[ETHAN & CONRAD]
I wasn't trying to be some literary sensation
I wasn't looking to see the path to my coronation
One more deadline
One more headline
One more month goes by

[ETHAN]
But I wasn't asking to be
The voice of my generation

The thing of it is, Brian
Talent just does what it does
I'm sure some people have a problem with that

[ROBIN]
In a bar down the block
On a stool, there's a girl
And she's named Cassandra
And she's blessed or she's cursed
With the power to see
In the future tense
You would think that the press would have found her
But the men at the bar who surround her
Say that her predictions never make a lick of sense

So she sits at the bar
Saying nothing and drinking
Her Coke and Sevens
Calculating the price of ignoring
The sound of the coming events
And half the stories of the world are left unwritten
Half the stories of the world are kept unread
And so the people of the world will never notice
What disasters unprevented lie ahead

At a desk, on the phone
In an office somewhere
You may meet Cassandra
So in pain from her visions
That sometimes she wishes
That she were dead
And you want to protect and defend her
But what you won't admit is: Her gender
Colors your interpretation of the things she said

Every day she decides
It's the day that she'll finally tell her story
Then she sees all the men
All the men getting their stories told instead
Thus all the women of the world are shamed to silence
All their warnings to the world are heard too late
And so the people of the world are left to wonder
What offenses unrepented
What disasters unprevented lie in wait

It's easy for you
You know it's easy for you
But I'm missing it
It's easy for you
I'm glad it's easy for you
But I'm missing it

You think that you know
You think you can see
You offer up words
To patronize me
But what doesn't change
Unquestionably
Is it's easy for you
And I'm missing it

Half the stories in the world are left unwritten
Half the stories have been lost along the way
And so the people of the world will not encounter
Anything but one perspective
One reflection, one directive
Male and white and unenlightened
Every day

It's easy for you
It's easy for you
But I'm missing it

[ETHAN, spoken]
I was standing on Monmouth Street in Jersey City
In the middle of a frigid February night
Waiting to meet an unelected, off-the-books
Political operative named Willis Taylor—
The man connected to a thousand local conspiracy theories
And, in this case, the key to perhaps finally bringing down
The notoriously corrupt and famously resilient mayor

[WILLIS]
Let's say you were me
Hypothetically
But instead of your fancy degree
You've been learning at the feet of the local sages
Whose names and ages
Ain't in your white pages

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
Uh uh uh

[WILLIS]
But you got this far
By knowing where you are
And how to strike a bargain
And play the margins
And take the measure
And knowing some people pay extra
For their private pleasure

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
Uh uh

[ENSEMBLE]
You get some information

[WILLIS & SOME MEN]
That could damage a certain someone's reputation

[WILLIS]
Yeah, so you commence a negotiation
To get some compensation
And raise up your station
But just when the parties have reckoned on terms
He has second thoughts and the gentleman squirms
Now you're abandoned
You're left high and dry
With only the silence he failed to buy

[WILLIS & SOME MEN]
Now what do you do in the face of defeat?

[WILLIS]
Do you attack? Do you crack?
Do you backtrack to your shack on the street?

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
Uh uh uh

[WILLIS]
Or do you say information has its price?
If they won't play nice
You can roll the dice
When discussion fails
You can balance the scales
With some well-placed sales
Of a couple details, and now:
I got the wind in my sails
Got the wind in my sails, little brother

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
I got the wind in my sails

[WILLIS]
Got the wind in my sails, little brother
Who's gonna fall? Who's gonna stand?
Who's got the upper hand?
And who's got supply to meet the demand
And the wind

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
The wind, the wind, the wind in my ...

[WILLIS]
Uh uh uh

[ENSEMBLE]
Uh uh uh

[WILLIS]
Unh unh

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
You start to spread the word

[WILLIS]
Maybe mention some things you heard
About the man of the hour
The man in the tower
The man with his feet on the pedals of power
The man who was elected to stem the tide of crime
Has been pursuin' some ruinous doings with his time
The brother spends his day with the PTA

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
But at night he gets tight at Monmouth and Bright

[WILLIS]
So you think the voters will understand
If he's seen with some teen between his knees
And a crack pipe in his hands?
I don't think so
I think the boys from Channel 4
Will be linin' up out my door
When they see it ain't just talk
It ain't just trash
It's the truth, I got proof if y'all got cash
And now, I got the wind in my sails
Got the wind in my sails, little brother

[ENSEMBLE]
Dot dot dot dot!

[WILLIS]
I got the wind in my sails
Got the wind in my sails, little brother

[ENSEMBLE]
Dot dot dot

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
Who's making threats? (Dot!)

[WILLIS]
Who's making waves?
Who's digging up the graves?
And who can survive
The closest of shaves with the wind

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
The wind, the wind, the wind
The wind in my...?

[WILLIS]
Uh uh uh

[ENSEMBLE]
Uh uh uh

[WILLIS]
Afraid? F*ck that! I ain't afraid!
I've seen how the sausage gets made
I'm gonna get paid before I get played
Or end up on the business end of a blade
See—it's not a story 'bout right or wrong
I said all along it's about who's strong
And who can handle a little pressure—
Sit down, son, I'ma give you a refresher

A is the mayor, C is the people
B is the man in between
A plays unfair, C's unaware
B calls your magazine
A gets defensive, B gets expensive
C starts to fear the worst—
So C puts the pressure on A puts the pressure on B—
Heh, who's gonna crumble first?

[WILLIS & SOME MEN]
You want the tape?
You write the story

[WILLIS]
I can show what he did with the kid in the video
But I'm keepin' it hid, yo

[ENSEMBLE]
Hey!

[WILLIS]
You want the tape?
You write the story
The only leverage I got
In this whole plot
The reason I ain't been shot
You can guess
Is a VHS of the whole damn mess
And the fact that I'm still alive is 'Cause I've

[WILLIS & ENSEMBLE]
Got the wind in my sails
Got the wind in my sails, little brother

[ENSEMBLE]
Dot dot dot dot dot dot!

[WILLIS]
I got the wind in my sails
Got the wind in my sails, little brother

[ENSEMBLE]
Dot dot dot dot!

[WILLIS]
Who's gonna fall?
Who's gonna stand?
Who's got the upper hand?
And who's gonna earn a hundred grand
With the wind, the wind, the wind
The wind in my...

[CONRAD]
Amy's there with her cap and gown
And the BFA in her hand
And she says, "Now what?"

Eighty thousand dollars
She says, "Now what?"
I said, "Honey, 'Now what'
Could be the theme song of your generation"

Meanwhile, all these consultant guys
Have been skulking down the halls
And I'm like, "Now what?"
First time in my life I'm thinking, "Now what?"
They leave me the steering wheel
But they get the gas and brake

I see what's coming
I see it steaming down the track
And I might just be in the way
Know what I mean?
I see what's coming
And it isn't turning back
And I say, "Hallelujah, hallelujah!
They can clean up all the mеss we made"

I see what's coming
Maybe fivе more years, I'm gone
And I'll be off to Shelter Island with Eileen
I see what's coming
And when I hand off that baton
Will I say, "Hallelujah, hallelujah?"
Aubrey handed all this off to me
We decided what this thing should be...
Now what?

[ETHAN]
A man walks down the street
La la la la la la la la la
A man hurries down a busy street
La la la la la la la la la
A pale old man in a dusty suit
Hurries down a busy street
A pale old man in a dusty suit
Hurries down a busy street
With a folded piece of paper in his hand
A prayer is written on
The folded piece of paper in his hand
La la la la la la la

[ETHAN & CONRAD]
"Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything
And start again"

[ETHAN, CONRAD & ROBIN]
"Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything
And start again"

[ETHAN, CONRAD, ROBIN & ENSEMBLE]
Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything
Help me forget everything

[ETHAN]
Doo doot doot doot doot doot doo doo
A man hurries down a busy street
La la la la la la la la la
A man hurries down a busy street
In Jerusalem

[MURIEL]
I marched with Dr. King once in Chicago
Nobody knows this, I've never told
But if anyone should doubt it
You can see me in the photo
On the front of the Tribune above the fold
And I used to have a scar
From a bottle someone threw
And I realize it's not a thing
You'd think that I would do
But I'd heard so much and read so much
About the man and so
I had to go
I had to know

My brother—this is heavily symbolic—
He was committed my sophomore year
He was sure the FBI had put electrodes on his brain
And so he shoved a pen-knife straight into his ear
It was terrible, and yet
What it mostly made me feel
Was the hope that now he'd finally admit it wasn't real
We agree: He must be crazy
We abandon the pretense
'Cause what makes sense
Is evidence

I'll believe in God when I see her
I'll believe in Santa when the sleigh lands on my roof
It's not an aberration—
I don't lack imagination
But my faith is predicated on proof

I have seen that memory is imperfect
I believe "objective" doesn't have to mean "aloof"
The facts, once they are stated
Cannot be negotiated
Thus my faith is predicated on proof

You believe in change and redemption
I believe the world is full of fools like Dr. King
The danger, I suppose, is
That your mind completely closes
And you don't believe a single f*cking thing
The man you've loved or hated
Has deceived and fabricated
A fact corroborated by proof

[ETHAN]
Christopher McGuinness
Of Dearborn, Michigan
Awoke to the sound of a doorbell
And a man in a limousine
And thereupon was driven
To a clinic in Ann Arbor
Where a team of surgeons worked for hours
And saved his heart
They saved his heart

And he never met the doctors
And he never saw a bill
And when I met Chris McGuinness
In a bar in Sugar Hill
He said, "I don't understand it
And I guess I never will
But God reached out to me

"All I ever did
Was write a prayer to God
On a tiny piece of paper
That I stuffed into the cracks
Of the Western Wall"

[ETHAN & (ENSEMBLE)]
The Western Wall
David Wild in London (Chanda Kapur of Mumbai)
Got a grant to study vertebrates (Got four goats and a fence)
And Renata Heinz of Düsseldorf
Got the title for her family farm
And fourteen other cases
Since 1987
Where a hopeless soul was rescued
By an unseen hand
An unseen hand

[ETHAN]
And what they all have in common
Is when things were at their worst
When they had no other options
When they felt their lives were cursed
Then a miracle befell them
And they say, like they've rehearsed

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
"God reached out to me!
All I ever did
Was write a prayer to God
On a tiny piece of paper
That I stuffed into the cracks
Of the Western Wall"
The Western Wall

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
The Western Wall

[OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Put a prayer in the cracks of the Western Wall
In the cracks of the Western Wall

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
The Western Wall

[OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Put a prayer in the cracks and God will find it

[ETHAN]
A street near the Mount of Olives
At midnight in Jerusalem
And an heiress I'll call Anna
Is showing me what she does
She hikes up to a clearing
Where each June and December
They bury the prayers collected from
The Wailing Wall

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
The Wailing Wall

[ETHAN]
And Anna tells me fiercely
That the crisis of our day
Is that faith is disappearing
And there has to be a way
To re-inspire the wonder
That could make somebody say

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
"God reached out to me"
So she digs through piles of wishes
And if she can identify whoever wrote it, she'll fulfill it
No matter what she has to try
And she's burned through all her fortune
And I needed to know why
And she said

[ETHAN]
"God reached out to me
God reached out to me"

[ENSEMBLE]
"All I ever did
Was write a prayer to God
On a tiny piece of

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE]
"Paper
That I stuffed into the cracks
Of

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
The Western Wall

[ETHAN & OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Put a prayer in the cracks of the Western Wall
In the cracks of the Western Wall

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
The Western Wall

[ETHAN & OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Put a prayer in the cracks and God will find it

[SOME ENSEMBLE]
The Western Wall

[ETHAN & OTHER ENSEMBLE]
Put a prayer in the cracks of the Western Wall
In the cracks of the Western Wall
Put a prayer in the cracks and God will find it
Put a prayer in the cracks of the Western Wall
In the cracks of the Western Wall
Put a prayer in the cracks and God will find it
Put a prayer in the cracks of the Western Wall
In the cracks of the Western Wall
Put a prayer in the cracks and God will find it

[ETHAN & ENSEMBLE, spoken]
"Until they can see God," she said
"I will have to be God"

[ROBIN & ETHAN]
What looks at first to be remarkable, bizarre
Will soon reveal itself to be part of a pattern
And we who stand outside identify the history
In the seemingly unprecedented thing

[ETHAN]
We believe what we believe
And all we want is someone to confirm it
We believe what we believe
Surround ourselves with people who
Beliеve the way we do

If thе world does not behave
In accordance with the things
That we've convinced ourselves are true
Still, we believe what we believe
Ooh...

There never was a Waldo
There never was a Willis
There never was a Mona
There never was, there never was

There never was a Billy
There never was a Conrad
There never was a Robin
There never was, there never was

There never was a notebook
There never was a phone call
There never was a magazine
There never was, there never was

There never was an airplane
There never was a prophecy
There never was a motorcade
There never was a holocaust
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was
There never was

[ROBIN holds a copy of the final issue of The Connector]

[ROBIN, spoken]
"Ethan Dobson and The Truth: A New York City Story"
By Robin Martinez
The final issue of The Connector
September 1997