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dave malloy – ii. tambourine [missing lyrics] lyrics

[chorus, sung]
hey, pip, play your tambourine
make the sailors dance like they’re in the back of a limousine
oh
hey, pip, play your tambourine
make the sailors dance like they’re in the back of a limousine
oh

[elijah, spoken]
see now pip is changed
pip is changed, poor child, i would that he had died! i would that he had died! he’s half horrible now, that unearthly idiot face, the strange sweetness of his lunacy he speaks his crazy wit speech and verbalizes his madness in feverish ancient tongues

you think you’re crazy? do you, deep down? you think just because you can’t handle it on the subway sometimes or cause you cry at the grocery store sometimes or cause one time you stopped to watch a squirrel in the park for a

[chorus, spoken]
real long time

[elijah]
you think that means you’re crazy? that you’re a

[chorus]
holy fool?

[elijah]
oh, you think you’re a godd#mn prophet don’t you?

let him be god! you think every half#wit lunatic hasn’t thought himself a god, and every half#wit god a lunatic? and what does god think she is? is god sure she’s the one? does god not wonder if there isn’t maybe one more god above him? her. them. what do you want me to say? is god even cisgender?

[chorus]
is god cisgender?

[elijah]
is god black or brown or red or white or yellow or the color of the sea? does that cover it? i did that in a new order just to confuse you
in the caribbean they name the skins!

[chorus]
[?]

[elijah]
and in china they name the skins!

[chorus]
[?]

[elijah]
and speckled red was a piano player in georgia! and there are little green men in the sky! ah, but this isn’t the 50’s anymore, you can throw away your old sci#fi comic books, and you can throw away that old white book too

[chorus]
nine hundred pages of whalesongs?!

[elijah]
and i can put a bunch of pretty flowers in the order of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet#

[chorus]
mr. roy. g. biv

[elijah]
i can take a bushel of apples:

[chorus]
red, green, yellow

[elijah]
no, h#ll, i can take a bushel, i can take a bushel of whales and i can classify them
“and this one is white, and this one is gray and this one is blue”
and that’s fine! oh that’s just fine! oh we can color code the whales cause whales don’t have

[chorus]
feelings. and histories. and hate crimes
whales don’t have hate crimes

[elijah]
but they do have music. just like pip
just like pip and his tambourine
he shook it until the jinglers came off, not knowing he’d soon be losing jinglers of his own
three parts make the whole:

[chorus]
wood, metal, skin

[elijah]
and they jingle and jangle and tremble

[chorus]
black white god, [?], shake shake shake!

[elijah]
the wood is your bones! the metal is your mind and the skin# is the skin your soul or is soul the movement through the air? the sound waves themselves, vibrating air against your ear, drum to drum!

[chorus]
drum to drum!

[elijah & chorus]
drum to drum!

[chorus]
drum to drum!

[elijah & chorus]
drum to drum!

[elijah]
pip’s not dead! but he’s not alive either
he drifts through limbo, battles through [?] pip caught the spirit!

[chorus]
yes he did!

[elijah]
out there in the middle of the maddening sea, the spirit sent him up up up to the sky
where he caught a glimpse
juuuuust a glimpse of that great quarter#deck on high
on that holy quarter#deck stands his mother:

[chorus]
miriam the prophet!

[elijah]
with tambourines and with dancing!

[chorus]
and [?]

[elijah]
she embraces him and the congregation smiles, a salvation army band of saints and sinners. all musicians get to heaven, for they bring the glory to the earth
i can see them now:

[chorus]
esmeralda

[elijah]
brings him a flagon of water

[chorus]
stevie nicks

[elijah]
twirls her ribbons in the air

[chorus]
there’s bob dylan!
[sung]
play a song for me!

[elijah, spoken]
he’s there with

[chorus]
jimi hendrix

[elijah]
all along the watchtower they scream as they smash together two tambourines, heaven and h#ll colliding on the two and four

[chorus]
two… and four
two… and four

[elijah]
who defined the sound of motown in the 60’s and 70’s with his signature tambourine playing on such iconic records as war by edwin star and i hear a symphony by diana ross and the supremes?

[chorus]
jack ashford, a black man

[elijah]
jack ashford stands at miriam’s side, as

[chorus]
john coltrain

[elijah]
walks out onstage and plays alabama for this poor alabama boy whose body and soul were split in two
there’s every man and woman who ever shook in black church, every native who ever shook in a drum circle, shook that tambourine in righteous rapture!
they shake and sing and dance for pip!
welcome him into their rainbow choir!
all the skins, dark to pale! all of them, all of them god

[chorus]
miss roy g. biv

[elijah]
made in our image
eating yogurt and plantains from a h#llo kitty lunchbox, whistling as she gives out henna tattoos as we

[chorus]
tango with diamonds on the souls of our shoes

[elijah]
and praise the tambourine!

[chorus]
the world loves the tambourine!

[elijah]
in israel they call it

[chorus]
[?]

[elijah]
in colombia they call it

[chorus]
pandereta

[elijah]
in india they call it

[chorus]
kanjira

[elijah]
in iran they call it

[chorus]
daf

[elijah]
in china they call it

[chorus]
shougu

[elijah]
in ukraine they call it

[chorus]
buben

[elijah]
in indonesia they call it

[chorus]
rebana

[elijah]
in egypt they call it

[chorus]
riq

[elijah]
call it glory

[chorus]
call it god

[elijah]
call it a whale

[chorus]
call it [?]

[elijah]
call him ishmael!

[chorus]
call him pip!

[pip]
call him elijah!

[chorus]
elijah! [?]

[elijah]
and they call him ahab

[chorus]
ooh!

[elijah]
an old fool
vile king
his heart dried out
his [?] nailed to the mast
a spanish gold doubloon
and everyone’s on fire to unscrew it

[chorus]
but unscr#w#ng [?] what’s the consequence?

[elijah]
i go down, and you go down
you go down, and i go down
we are on this ship together, old man!
and we have both lost so much already

[chorus]
splish! splash! there goes the [?]
pip#not#pip
[?]

[elijah]
you and me? we, he and they, are all [?]

[elijah & pip]
my pip is a raven
my pip is a dove
i am toucan sam! i am sam#i#am! i do not like green eggs
and ham! i am the lorax!
caw! caw! caw! caw!
my pip is a bird of paradise!

[pip]
the bird of heaven, the bird of heaven goes down with the ship. poor little bird, what did he do? poor little bird got in the way of that scarecrow, he did! i go down, you go down! he goes down, the mast#head goes down there we lay on the ocean floor! oysters for a [?], oysters for a shroud! save the bird, save the bird, save him from that scarecrow! he is an albatross! he is a squid#man[?]! he is a squall# white, pale dying ghost! caw! caw! there goes the [?]! god’s foot upon the treadle of the loom. god goes berry picking among the world, among the whales, among the scarecrows, among the fleas, among us, all! he##

[elijah]
but pip’s time has not come yet. the holy chorus waves him goodbye, and he is exiled from his proper home. hurdling through sp#ce, he screams sublime divine as he is plunged into the ocean and it swallows up his soul, leaving behind just a body, just a body, just a body

[chorus]
my body is here but my soul is drowned
my body is here but my soul is drowned

[elijah]
he shudders in gasps in the bad swells of the surging, omnipotent sea. it was all too much, too much, too much for his sweet, tiny soul to take. oh pip, poor child, poor child, poor pip

[chorus, sung]
hey pip, play your tambourine
make the sailors dance like they’re in the back of a limousine
oh

[ahab, spoken]
pip? pip, where art thou? who art thou? i see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes

[pip]
pip’s not here. pip jumped from the whaleboat. ding, dong, ding! pip! pip! pip! pip!

[elijah]
o lord, my god, i pray thee, let this child’s soul come back into him again. do you wanna know what happened to pip?

[chorus]
yeah!

[elijah]
do you wanna know what happened to pip?

[chorus]
yeah!

[elijah]
do you wanna know what happened to pip!?

[chorus]
yeah!

- dave malloy lyrics

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