The origin of love
or my annual tribute to Hedwig and the Angry Inch

When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.

The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightning, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

You remind me of a firework, boy

You touch the ceiling, you touch the floor
You sparkle and burn but you take your time
And i bet i could carry you across state lines

I'd tell you why, but i don't know
It's simple and so complicated
I could walk all day on the railroad track
But there's much more to it than that

You know all of my secret ideas
The ones i'm giving up on and the ones i'll keep
And everybody sees a funny look in our eyes
'Cause we know that we already won the sweepstakes prize

I'd tell you why, but i don't know
It's simple and so complicated
I could walk all day on the railroad track
But there's much more to it than that

I ask you if you ever think that maybe
It's what's inside of us that drives us crazy
Fingers feeling underneath your skin
There's blood and bones and some rivers to fall in

I'd tell you why, but i don't know
It's simple and so complicated
I could walk all day on the railroad track
But there's much more to it than that

I'm so lucky because i asked you once
"What are you doing? Do you wanna come up
For a cup of tea? Come visit with me
We'll play guitars and i'll give you my number"

I'd tell you why, but i don't know
It's simple and so complicated
I could walk all day on the railroad track
But there's much more to it than that

I'd tell you why, but i don't know
It's simple and so complicated
I could walk all day on the railroad track
But there's much more to it than that

-from Mirah's brilliantly titled You Think It's Like This, But Really It's Like This, one of my all-time favorites