Just a Friend

You can hear an mp3 of the song in its present form here.
A live performance from late May 2011 from Lizard Lounge with George Woods providing an excellent guitar accompaniment can be found here. Just a Friend

Background

This is another song that came together pretty quickly in mid-2008. It reminds me of Burt Bacharach.

While it was still a work in progress, Vinnie Taormina offered some great bluesy sounds and his own improvised lyrics to a form called "Things are Fine", (take 1 and take 2). His thinking certainly gave me an idea of how to finish it. Hehe, just listening to Take 1 now, I hear a bridge I had totally forgotten about, though it needs to differentiate itself from that in "What a Day for a Daydream". Maybe it needs to reappear.

I am not really happy with it in the form I now have it. If we leave aside the squeaking attempt at the bridge, it needs to be longer, and I want the narrative to be not from an aspiring lover but from the woman's dog who pines for her during the day and resents the time she spends with romantic partners. He'd be thinking, "each day you're gone seem more like a week" to hint at the 7:1 time dilation, but otherwise it would not be spelled out. Dogs rule and they do love us.

Lyrics

At present, they stand as

She'll be fine.
She'll be fine.
She just needs a little room, she needs time.

So she can cry.
And say good-bye
to that part of herself that she put on a shelf
for some unworthy guy.

I have been here once before
Holding her at my front door
I'll put her on her feet again
'cause I'm a friend.
I'm just a friend.
and I know what friends are for.
'cause I'm a friend and nothing more.

She'll be fine.
She'll be fine.
She just needs to close her eyes while supine.

And I, I will steep that tea that I keep
up behind the Darjeeling, that infusion of feeling
that drowns me as she sleeps.

I'm just a friend.
I'm just a friend.
I'm just a friend.
I'm just a friend.