Incubus (live)

When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion
Forwarned my audience leaves the stage, floating ahead
Perfumed shift, within the stammering silence
The face that launched a thousand frames
Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career

You've played this scene before, you've played this scene before
I, the mote in your eye,
I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination, in pornographic images
In which you will always be the star
Untouchable, unapproachable
Constant in the darkness, in the darkness
Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction
With no flower to place before this gravestone
And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin
But that would only be developing the negative view
And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic color, the public act
Let you model your shame on the mannequin catwalk, catwalk
Let the cats walk

I've played, this scene before, I've played, this scene before
I, the mote in your eye,
I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, satisfaction

You can't brush me under the carpet, you can't hide me under the stairs
The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of yesteryear
Who, as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity
Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity
You, who I directed with a lover's will, you who I let hypnotize the lens
You who I let bathe in the spotlight's glare
You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask
Just like a greasepaint mask

But now I'm the snake in the grass
The ghost of film reels past
The producer of your nightmare
And the performance has just begun, it's just begun
Begun, it's just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets
As you stutter, paralyzed, with rabbit's eyes
Searing the shadows, flooding the wings
To pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips
Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary
My cue line in the last act, and you'll wait in silent solitude
Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt.

You've played this scene before