La Dispute - Eight lyrics

1978 san Diego i’d just come out the other
Side of a relationship that blew up…I was
Angry, and disillusioned
And ultimately self-destructive i’d
Lost everything
I believed in …I was as utterly
Completely alone as I’ve ever been

So I began going on walks

I started taking late-night walks
Around the San
Diego suburb I was living in at
The time i’d start walking early evening
And come back close to midnight
Sometimes later walking and thinking
And chewing over
What had gone wrong with my life
One night, at Fourth and E Streets
I got mugged and beaten by
A street gang sent me


To the hospital with serious intimations
Of mortality when the
ER techs asked what my religion was
I refused to answer i made my
Private peace with the universe, content with
Whatever was going to happen, live or die

Then something happened i got angry
I got angry because I
Still had stories to tell so I fought back

It took two months to fully recover but two
Things came out of that incident first
I have no fear of death none whatsoever
Second…as soon as I was well enough
I started walking again

Sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning
Through parts of town that made
Even street people nervous

When people asked what I was
Doing out there that late
At night, the only answer I could give was
"I’m looking for something"
So I kept walking through some
Of the most dangerous
Parts of San Diego, before it got cleaned up
When it was still home to hookers and drunks
And gangs and addicts and random violence

Finally, one afternoon
I came to the same areas
I walked through at night
And I was struck by the dichotomy
Between that corner at night
And the very same corner during the day

In the daylight, there were businessmen
And kids and clerks
Eager to get home to dinner and TV and family

Then, later, came the night
Shift, the lost people
Emerging from shadows and beds of
Pain to walk the same streets in
Search of fixes, money, and bars
Gradually fading away with the dawn

Two totally different worlds
Sharing nothing but longitude and
Latitude there was
The nation in the day, and
The nation at night
Existing side by side but
Each fleeing the other a daylight nation

And a midnight nation

I saw a country bifurcated by more than
Just the presence and absence of light
But by lives cast aside and lost and
Uncared for the walked away and
The thrown-away on one side, and
On the other, those who pretended
Not to see them
Because not seeing is easier
And I saw someone forced to walk
Both sides of the metaphor, to learn
That the greatest cruelty is our casual
Blindness to the despair of others
That there but for the grace of whatever god
You subscribe to goes any of us

And finally, I realized that I had
Found what I was looking for
Without ever being quite sure what it was

I found a story that would make
My own life make sense again

This story i still take long walks
And I still stop and talk to the
People who stand at the corner and
Wait for something to happen to them
Who wait for
Money to fall into a hat or a cup
Who wait for someone to recognize their pain

Because the line between the midnight
Nation and the place
Where I sit right now, writing these words
Is thin and ephemeral and can
Be crossed in an instant
And because the road to the midnight nation
Can be erased only through compassion

I found my story, this story
On a hazy afternoon in 1978
Now it’s yours the keys to the
Midnight nation are in your hands
What you do with them is up to you

J michael Straczynski sherman Oaks, CA
July 21st 2002