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Easy to Smile was re-mixed and re-mastered in November 2022
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[This is a new mix. Drums by John Bennetts have been added and pretty much everything else has been changed, at least a little. April 2002.]
Sometime around 1971 I wrote these words. I don’t remember writing them, but I know where they came from. I don’t think I ever performed it as a song back in the day. I found the words in an old journal.
When I saw them I almost immediately recalled a tune of sorts. It wasn’t this song, but it was a beginning.
This is a song about depression and how I survived it. When I wrote it I still had another 25 years of surviving it ahead of me. But I’d made a decision years before, when I was 14, that no matter how bad it got it would always get better. And it always did, at least for a while. And knowing that somehow made it just a little bit easier to smile.
Easy to Smile
Verse 1:
It’s more than a song
But less than a dream
I know what I say
Is not what I mean
Pretending my words
Aren’t meant to deceive
I’m playing with doubt
I want to believe
I know that it’s hard
To explain why I’m here
I complain though I know
There is nothing to fear
But the fear and the doubt
That wind through my mind
Are inventions of mine
That help pass the time
Chorus:
So here is my song
I wrote it for me
I need to recall
That it’s easy to be
The times that I’ve faced
My life as a trial
Have taught me to see
That it’s easy to smile
Verse 2:
I’m more than a child
But less than a man
I know where I’ve been
But not who I am
I’ll say that I’m strong
I’ll tell you I’m free
But none of that’s true
I just want it to be
Once I entered a room
I pulled down the shade
I turned out the lights
I wanted to fade
But I noticed the wall
Right there looking at me
Pretending to be blind
I really wanted to see
Chorus:
So here is my song
I wrote it for me
I need to recall
That it’s easy to be
The times that I’ve faced
My life as a trial
Have taught me to see
That it’s easy to smile
Verse 3:
It all seemed to happen
A while ago
At a time I was lost
I just didn’t know
That doubting was simply
A game that I had
It gave me a reason
For feeling this bad
There are times there are changes
My memory moves
Preaching the patterns
I’ve worn into grooves
Repeating mistakes
I made in my youth
Learning the lines
And calling them truth
I can’t help but change
Can’t help but survive
I might drown in doubt
But I’ll still be alive
Chorus:
So here is my song
I wrote it for me
I need to recall
That it’s easy to be
The times that I’ve faced
My life as a trial
Have taught me to see
That it’s easy to smile
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