Rainbow's Edge

© 1998 Stephen Savitzky. CC-by-nc-sa.

Recordings:

Lyrics [pdf] [txt] [cho]

	A
I'm l	ying in bed in the dawn's grey light

	D	A
And I'm tr	ying to write a s	ong;

	D	A
It's	one of those times when the f	eeling's right

	E
But everything else is wr	ong.

	D	A
I w	ish I could have a r	ainbow,

	E
To light up the morning sk	y

	Esus	E
Wish I could find the w	ords to	use

	Esus	E	E	A
When it's t	oo h	ard to s	ay goodb	ye.

D A Asus A

A l ittle over the r ainb ow's edge

D E

Is a c olor the eye can't s ee

A Esus A

B ut I can't seem t o rememb er

E

When my father told that to m e.

D5 D A

My m emory's like t he rainb ow,

A E

There are p ieces that come and g o,

A Esus A

And s omewhere over the rainb ow's edge

E E7 A

Is s omething I used to kn ow.

I'm stuck in the rush-hour traffic jam

Going home in a winter rain,

Remembering some of our summer trips

To Tennessee and to Maine.

Eating picnic lunch by the roadside;

Hitting every tourist sight

Playing solitaire and casino

In our motel room at night.

I step off a train in Electric Town

And wonder which way to go;

Akihabara's like Canal Street

When we called it Radio Row.

Dad taught me about computers back

In the old days, when men were men

And transistors were germanium;

Writing code with a ballpoint pen.

A little over the rainbow's edge

Is a color that has no name

The clouds in the sky keep changing

And nothing remains the same.

The rainbow is only sunlight

Spread out in the cloudy air

A little like a memory

When nothing is really there.

I'm driving down out of Hecker Pass

On a winding road to the sea,

My kids in the back seat reading

Just like my brother and me.

We'd go to New York on weekends,

For museums, or just to roam;

There were sodium vapor streetlamps

At night on the highway home.

I'm standing here doing the morning chores

And trying hard not to cry

Remembering all of the things we did

In all of the days gone by.

And there isn't a rainbow this time,

But maybe before tonight

I'll remember enough of the words I need

For the song that I want to write.

A little over the rainbow's edge

Is a color the eye can't see,

But I will always remember

What my father has been to me.

But sunlight becomes the rainbow

Only after a storm has gone;

Somewhere over the rainbow's edge

I'm trying to carry on.

The frequent references to infrared light reflect the fact that my father's field of research was infrared spectroscopy.

Electric Town is located in the Akihabara section of Tokyo. It bears a strong resemblance to Canal Street and Cortlandt Street in the days of New York's ``Radio Row''. Cortlandt Street was demolished when the twin-towered Pan Am building was built. For all I know Canal Street may still be there. Dad took me there the first time or two.

Hecker Pass is one of the routes over the Santa Cruz mountains from Gilroy to Monterey; the Monterey Bay Aquarium is excellent, and it's one of my family's frequent weekend destinations. Back in the old days when we lived 50 miles from New York City, we'd often go to the Museum of Natural History (my favorite) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dad's mother lived in the Bronx on 232$^{\rm nd}$ street.

I wrote most of this song about six months before my father died; we had a year between the time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his death.