Everything is bleak
It’s the middle of the night
You’re all alone
And the dummies might be right
You feel like a jerk
My music at work
My music at work
Ah, truer words. Truer words, folks.
This one is personal. This one stings. This one, I lived myself.
You see, I used to be a lawyer, and my initial years in the profession were spent at a Bay Street law firm that was as much cult as place of business, full to bursting with the same sort of self-satisfied, privileged, upper class, clever-clever Caucasion pricks on wheels that we saw not so long ago acting as both witness and Republican interlocutor in the hearings to appoint self-satisfied misogynist prep. school shit-heel Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. Down there at King and Bay, you worked yourself nearly to death helping the wealthy avoid paying their fair share of taxes, hoping to one day win the prize, while they kept moving the goalposts. Nights and weekends, nights and weekends, you know the drill, asshole. We will not be the ones to blame for the inevitable delay in closing. Keep those billable hours coming. Now, drop and give me fifty, maggot. For years and years, there I was at my desk, struggling to understand the arcana in the absence of any sort of guidance, when everything was indeed bleak in the middle of the night, and I felt like a jerk.
Here, Gord Downie portrays more of a low-level corporate grunt than aspiring master of the Universe, but the manic, meaningless, claustrophobic choreography of the dark, regimented office space is just the same. The night so long it hurts.
the needlefish 