Dar Williams
"What Do You Hear In These Sounds?"


I don't go to therapy to find out if I'm a freak
I go and I find the only answer every week
And it's just me and all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she's so kind, I think she wants to tell me something
But she knows that it's much better if I get it for myself
So she says

Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,
What do you hear in these sounds?
Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,
What do you hear in these sounds?

I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing,
And the promise to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving,
And so she says oh, I say, "what?" She says "Exactly,"
I say, "What, you think I'm angry?"
She says, "Look, you come here every week
Lyricswith jigsaw pieces of your past,
It's all on little soundbytes, and voices out of photographs,
And that's all yours, that's the guide, that's the map,
So tell me, where does the arrow point to,
Who invented roses and

Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,
What do you hear in these sounds?
And Ooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,
What do you hear in these sounds?

And when I talk, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself

And I wake up, and I ask myself what state I'm in
And I say well I'm lucky cause I am like East Berlin
I had this wall, and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing
And they'd know that I was scared
They would know that I was guessing
But the wall came down, and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out, just like me

And Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
The stories that nobody hears
I collect these sounds in my ears
And Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
That's what I hear in these sounds
And Ooooooooooooooooh, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
That's what I hear in these
that's what I hear in these sounds