I touched myself while I read your words in my hotel in New York
I’d just returned from the holy land and I needed a little pork
The radio’s corrupting me but I wouldn’t turn it off
And I was just floating in the land of the dead

Nietzsche was alive and God was dead and things were falling apart
The war was turning bad, we had our own little Bonapartre
But the counter-revolution was on and spring was in the air
And the daffodils were blooming in the land of the dead

And I read your words in the bed of my little east side New York hotel
I floated out the window, wandered up to Kitchen’s Hell
In the bar it wasn’t the god damn Yanks, but the working class Mets
Off playing somewhere in the land of the dead

And I copied your words in the copy shop, then I passed them around the store
Sorry if I violated something I never done this before
Everyone got kinda hot, that’s just the way it was
Or maybe just for me in the land of the dead

And I finally figured out that if I truly would be free
I gotta give you the same emancipation you give me
My excuse was it didn’t mean nothing, you had no excuse at all
And the future don’t exist in the land of the dead

And I wrote this over a series of days when I was figuring relativity out
In the afternoons I’d calculate, at night I’d gad about
The special one came easily, the general came next
Floating through time and space in the land of the dead

Well thanks to Prince for the melody, thanks to you for the words you wrote
I gotta go now, I gotta take off, I already got my coat
I gotta go look at stuff and look at girls and look at the street
And maybe I’ll see you sometime outside the land of the dead

(lyrics: Dan Bern)