While most children are playing with dolls and building blocks in the safe and protected world of a family home, the impoverished child's life is never that easy. Urban ghetto youth often have to grow up quick to survive. Sex, drugs and cigarettes are often the precocious toys of urban youth.
The bleakness of the hood is overcome by a steady diet of danger and excitement. Yet, such rushes and highs are very temporary and once gone the sense of personal emptiness comes back with a vengeance.
The young man in this story is both proud and horrified by his adult way of being in the world. He mourns the lack of a childhood, while bragging about his sophistication and street smarts.
Yet, at the end of the day he yearns for meaning in his life. Even as a young adult he's tired of the lack of depth a life of excitement and danger bring. He wonders if he could find a safe place away from the glare of the city streets. Maybe off in the shadows he could find solace and some meaning in his life. Maybe, he wonders, the hope for a real life exists in the shadows.
lyrics
Life In The Shadows 7/4/79
I’ve had sex and drugs and cigarettes since I was young
I made money since I could count
All the excitement that was there to be had
Has been grabbed since I partied about
Maybe I can live in the shadows
Instead of the light surrounding me and you
Starkness may be an unexpected blessing
For excitement is nothing when it’s thru
I now work and I now play
Been an adult since I was ten
But if I sit and turn around
I feel empty till I run about
Maybe I can live in the shadows
Instead of the light surrounding me and you
Starkness may be an unexpected blessing
For excitement in nothing when it’s thru
I have plenty of things
Nothing of my own
I see with the eyes of the world
The line has been drawn
Piecemeal excitement
I sense a cavity deep inside
My shudder speed misses the spectacle
Right before my eyes
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