Visions of Johanna (Live at the Royal Albert Hall)

Ain't it just like the night
To play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it

The lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off

Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

In the empty lot where the ladies play Blind Man's Bluff with the keychain
And the all-night girls, they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
And ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane

Louise, she's alright, she's just near
She's delicate, she seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear Johanna's not here

The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up, he speaks of farewell kiss to me
He sure got a lot of gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall

How can I explain it's so hard to get on?
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smile

See the primitive wallflower freeze
When all jelly-faced women sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeez. I can't find my knees"

Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
Like Louise always says, "You can't look at much, can you, man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him

And Madonna still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which once was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads, while my conscience explodes

The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

Thank you