A Better Way

Dear Vincent
Is it true that you ate yellow paint
So you could bleed sunshine instead of red heartbreak and pain

Dear Vincent
Is your story one hist'ry rewrote
Did you let out your demons on canvas, so flowers could grow

Would your paintings have been so amazing
If you had been saner?
Did your sadness unlock the holy in something so plain as one pale face

Was a brush
Just enough
To get you through when times were tough

Would you trade the starry night for day
Is there a better way

Dear Amy
The blackness got you in the end
Did you think you had beat it before it got you back again

Dear Joni
Did you blister your fingers from playing guitar
Preaching that melancholy ought to live close to the heart

Would we still sing those tunes if you hadn't been quite so blue
Was that your secret, were you inspired by the sadness in you

Were you wrong
All along
Is there pain left unfixed by a song
Are all great ones a bandage for pain
Or is there a better way

Dear Virginia
Were you only sane as you wrote
At the end of the book, was there nothing to keep you afloat

Dear Sylvia
Did you find beauty in those torturous thoughts
Did your poetry free you or were you just caught in the storm

Did you think that the world would find truth in your journals
Or were they never meant to
Do you only become art when somebody really sees you

Did each verse
Make it worse
Was your eloquence really a curse
That's your burden, even today
Is there a better way

There's a monster living in you like is living in me
Does he take your vision away or does he help you to see
Am I doomed to this fate
The recluse who holds hate
In their heart
And the hate makes the art
Must I cling to this pain
So I've something to say
What will it be
Will I beat this or will it beat me

Dear Vincent
What would you tell me today
Would I have to choose either way
Joy never made something great
But sadness is heavy and I can't hold this weight
What did you do on those days
Did you paint

The ivory knows
And the ivory cares
And the ivory listens
More than they'd ever dare
But the things in my head
My fingers can't play
Is there a better way



Credits
Writer(s): Ashton Turner
Lyrics powered by www.musixmatch.com

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