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I just don't want to do this anymore

by Ken Baake

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about

I was reading an academic journal article on my computer, feeling ever more frustrated trying to hear a beat amid all the fits and starts of difficult language (not to mention the relentless parenthetical citation name and date inserts, which seem to randomly interrupt whatever flow there might be).

So I wrote this song and felt better.

Maybe I wasn't fully cut out for academic writing, or maybe at nearly 60 I am no longer fit enough to push through it in search of succor. I read stuff now that rides a good jostling story--like when I was a kid. I could never write my mid-career dissertation again. As Dylan sang, "I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now."

Ironically, taking a less intellectually encumbered view of life may make us better teachers. I continue to have great affection for my students.

Maybe it's only in the middle years that we can--or desire to--do the stuff adults are supposed to do, or at least in the manner they are supposed to do it.

lyrics

Don’t Want to Do this Anymore
Feb. 16, 2013
Intro instrumental
C- - -|C - - dm7|G -- G| G - - -
C- - -|C - - dm7|G - - G| C - - -

|C- - - | C |C
The grammar may be clean
|dm |dm
But the words I don’t want to hear.
| F |am7
They’ve been shelling me since ‘99
|G |G
It gets heavier every year.
|F |
I’ll put on my field mask
|C |C
Try to filter out this war.
| G
It isn’t you
|G | F |C
I just don’t want to do this anymore

E |E
Haven’t we said enough?
|D |
Sprayed the ground with our news?
|F |
Is what you have to say
|C |Gsus G G7 G6
Something we can use?

|C | C
Paragraphs of dried prose
|dm |dm
Flake like skin across the screen.
|F |am7
I sweep all I can handle
|G |
Let the rest pass by unseen.
|F |
Shake the dust out of my brain
|C
Take all I can endure.
| G
It isn’t you
|G | F |C
I just don’t want to do this anymore

E |E
Haven’t we said enough?
|D |
Sprayed the ground with our news?
|F |
Is what you have to say
|C |Gsus G G7 G6
Something we can use?

Instrumental
C- - -|C - - dm7|G -- G| G - - -
C- - -|C - - dm7|G - - G| C - - -

|C- - - | C |C
I won’t last forever
|dm |dm
Neither will all these lines.
|F |am7
But one us surges forward.
|G |G
While the other falls behind.
|F |
So please help a broken soldier.
|C |C
Who has lost all his allure.
| G
It isn’t you
|G | F |C
I just don’t want to do this anymore

E |E
Haven’t we said enough?

|D |
Sprayed the ground with our news?

|F |
Is what you have to say

|C |C |Gsus G G7 G6| C
Something we can use?

credits

released March 23, 2014
Ken vocals and guitar parts.

Recorded at the Crossroads Recording Studio, Texas Tech University.
Amy DeVoge, producer/engineer.

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all rights reserved

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about

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Ken Baake Lubbock, Texas

Ken was born in Baltimore in 1955. He grew up hearing everyone from Johnny Mercer and Ray Charles to the Beatles on the family hi-fi, with a usual Saturday encore of Wagner's operas. Ken has degrees in English and economics and a background in journalism. He is currently an associate professor of English at Texas Tech, teaching classes in rhetoric. ... more

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