the brief

just when you thought it was safe to jump back into the pool, sas rears its ugly head to remind us shit happens . . . over and over and over again

The last of the first phase songs started on the guitar with a simple but punchy chord sequence that repeated over and over. There was no apparent chorus, no sense of lyrics, no hint of the song to come. Just that chord sequence which I learned to play about as well as I could any of the other 1.0 songs (poorly in other words).

It was the 10th song to start channeling, the last to come on the guitar, and the 2nd funi-flavour karosong — although it included a big enough dollop of sas that it appears on the sas-karo list as well as the funi-karo list. (Check out the 'flavours' tour if you haven't come across these terms yet.)

But when they started coming, the lyrics blew out that guitar sequence.

There are patterns to remember
each time they come a knocking
on the door marked oppor-tun-i-
time

to knock you on your keester
or pull away your bleester

and one of them's the nightmare run
the omigod it's all begun
to look the way it done before
the nightmare had run its course

and we were back at the
begunning . . .

For one thing, the lyrics were fast, full of internal rhymes and delivered at a near staccato pace. They also had sudden stops where the last lyric was held momentarily and then the staccato ploughed on.

On top of that, as best as this idiot musant could figure out, the lyric 'verses' were a bar or phrase longer than the guitar 'verses' and so the effect was each new verse started on a later chord in the sequence. The combined effect made the song feel like it was over-running itself, the way someone about to trip over their own feet speeds up to keep from falling. . .

But then falls anyway.

and if it all seems like some movie
you've seen on the late show
when your eyes were getting weary
the scenes getting bleary

then you take a second look and it’s you
inside the courtroom
and the dreary are the jury and
you've just been found guilty

guilty

So it was a challenge to play and to sing, to get the lyrics and chord changes synced and keep them synced. But it was fun. A hoot in fact. A hoot because — more than any other song to that point — it was personal. It was this identity, this bag of bones and blood, taking the mickey out of its own experience.

You see, I had been living the nightmare run courtesy of the meditation and its implacable self-awareness lessons for several years. I had railed against the energies behind them, resisted the inner changes they were pushing forward, rejected my own growth.

All for nothing. The nightmare run just kept pushing.

Until I changed.

still there’s something to be said for it
and something to be gained from it
if we can but take the time to
remember

that life is full of lessons and
the lessons never lessen
until we’ve learned to listen
to the lessons we’ve been missing

if you know what i mean

Like Better run boy, the other funi-flavour song from the first phase, there was no 2.0 version of The nightmare run come forward. It remains a singular karosong.

no the nightmare run's not much fun
fact I’d sooner swallow a gun then
chew exlax and have the runs and
not have the buns to make the dun

I mean, it’s the shits

Post-script

I'm not sure why, but I made no recordings of The Nightmare Run during the first phase itself. (There were no recordings of two other 1.0 songs, and all three songs disappeared from memory. The other two songs remain forgotten, but I was able to resurrect this one many years later (see about the recordings).