Corridors

Brooklyn, December 5th, 2018

New video of ‘Corridors’, performed live at The Capitol Theatre opening for Glen Hansard on July 27th, 2018.

 

Clare, Saoirse and I will be leaving our current apartment in the new year. Clare and I have lived here since 2011, Saoirse, has lived here all of her 1 month life. I wrote this song here. At the time our neighbours across the hallway adopted a baby. I used to joke, that I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, she was not pregnant, hopefully they’d adopted the baby. When I’d come home from gigs late at night sometimes I would hear the baby crying. It made me worry about what sounds maybe neighbours had endured over the years of me writing and rewriting and rewriting songs across the hallway.

There’s a view of lower Manhattan from the fire escape by our bedroom window. From there we watched One World Trade Centre slowly climb back into the skyline. This song stems from that time.

 

Corridors- Niall Connolly

We live in boxes, in boxes on boxes,
It’s a high price to pay, for a little privacy.
Still, I’ve got door handles and curtains,
Two rooms and three keys.
I’ve come with time to believe,
These things necessities.

Newborn neighbour cries,
I come home late,
I try to come home quiet,
And in the mornings,
We nod and smile,
In the corridors.

The days on the calendar,
In boxes aligned,
Like these voices as they bounce,
Around this high-rise.
We think we’ve got them figured out,
Based on our time,
Till we get our comeuppance,
And they take us by surprise

Downstairs neighbours fight,
When to call it in, or just let it go by,
And in the morning we nod and smile,
In the corridors.

Walking through the cemetery,
Marvel at the marble carved memories.
Downtown a new tower rising,
Through the gaping wound on the horizon,
Reminding us if we need reminding,
That all is fragile use your time well.

We are more than these mortgaged boxes,
More, than this sheet rock corridor,
Yeah, we are more,
Than these corridors.

We live in boxes,
In boxes we’ll go