Music written mid- to late-2001. Lyrics completed June 2002. Instrumentation: Concert piano, oboe, synth, percussion, vocals.
Words and music copyright 2001-2002 by Ty Davison. All rights reserved.
Dorian Grey [3:20 / 3 MB MP3]
Painted your picture in dorian grey
A portrait of you that you hid away
Replete with the scars and showing all the flaws
So you kept it behind locked doors
Anyone could have told you that it would end this way
Anyone could have shown you that victimhood is a fool's game
A study in shadow, a study in light
A study in masks and what's behind
You painted by number, one, two, three
But nobody's canvas is mistake-free
Life between the lines means living confined
And that's not who you're meant to be
Set aside the pride that's deadening your insides and live freely
It's okay...It's okay...It's okay...
Mentally drawn and physically cornered
A sheltered life lived within a border
And who can we find, who can we blame
Since we all exhibit these traits?
Is it a start to love, knowing that you're not alone
And is because we all have portraits of our own?
It's okay...It's okay...
To have a portrait of Dorian Grey.
NOTES
Oscar Wilde's brilliant The Picture of Dorian Grey serves as the thematic background, though obviously I'm not dealing here with his characters. The idea that we all have flaws and psychological baggage that we attempt to hide away from others is hardly novel in an artistic context primarily because we're all inherently damaged goods to a greater or lesser degree in terms of mental health (and artists may know this better than most!). What's crucial, it seems to me, is that we acknowledge and perhaps even expose our faults so that we can, through the help of others' perspectives, understand and deal with who we are.
