I saw the best of my generation playing pinball
Maked up and caked up and looking like some kind of china doll
With all of Adolph Hitler’s moves down cold as they stood up in front of a rock n roll band
And always moving upward and ever upward to this gentle, golden promised land
With the smartest of them all moonlighting as a word processor
And the strongest of them all checking I.D.’s outside saloons
And the prettiest of them all taking off her clothes in front of men whose eyes looked like
they were in some little hick town near Omaha watching the police chief
run his car off the side of a bridge
And I saw men with dreams like the ones I’d had beg quarters outside the 7-11
‘til it got so they didn’t affect me any more than the mail boxes I’d pass
‘cept that sometimes I’d put something in the mailbox
I had had the wind at my back
Now I felt it cold in my face
And for an awful long time now
You were the only one who ever called me late at night
And I never really noticed til after you stopped calling
And the emptiness and silence got so heavy

Broken up in the Wasteland
Broken up in the Promised Land
Broken up in Disneyland
Broken up in the Plastic Land
Broken up in the Wasteland
Broken up in the Wasteland
Broken up in the Wasteland

And I saw dead Marilyn Monroe strung up on every street corner in Hollywood
like some two-bit whore offering a discount rate and I wondered how Joe Dimaggio felt
And I saw dead James Dean’s ghost wandering the sidewalk looking troubled
and I wondered how his mama felt
I saw signs that said headshots done for cheap
And signs that said extras wanted, top dollars paid
And signs for haircuts
And signs for manicures
And signs for tanning salon
And signs for wardrobe specialists
And signs for cosmetic surgery
And signs for assertiveness training
And I stopped to read them all
And every single block
Looked like every single block
Looked like every single block
Looked like every single block
But you kept driving
‘Cause everyone else kept driving
And ‘cause gridlock is evil
And not knowing your way is evil
And those who had money looked good but weren’t too happy
And those who didn’t have money didn’t look so good and weren’t so happy either
And in a city of 3 million, 269 thousand, 984, everyone was lonely

Broken up in the Wasteland….

And I watched as everyone I knew spent their lives trying to be watched on a stage
or watched in a film or listened to on record and they thought
maybe that way I could get a little love out of this life
And I watched as the best of my generation abandoned their dreams
and settled for making a little money
And I watched tv and read the papers and listened to the radio and made all the fancy scenes
and said all the right words and wore all the right clothes and knew the names of the hip people
But I still felt out of touch so I stopped watching tv and reading the papers
and listening to the radio and making the fancy scenes and saying the right words
and wearing the right clothes and knowing the names of the hip people and
I felt more out of touch than ever, but I didn’t care anymore
And I felt you slipping away
And I felt myself slipping from you
And I wanted more than anything else for it to rain for one whole day like it used to
but all there ever was was sun, relentless sun, hot beating sun
and everyone wore their sunglasses and walked around like flies
under a magnifying glass with their eyes removed

Broken up in the Wasteland ….

(lyrics: Dan Bern)