Where the Good Life Begins... and Ends

Words, music, and video by Terry Gray

This song is an introspective investigation of what's important in modern life, which often seems to be filled with unending time pressures and timeless angst about values and tradeoffs between modernity and serenity.

The song was originally inspired by a sign on an apartment building adjacent to a Los Angeles freeway, which said, with no hint of irony, "Where the Good Life Begins". I soon after wrote another song I called "Nature's Song", but then realized it was a perfect counterpoint to the first one, so I combined them.

Hope you enjoy this dive into the philosophical foundations of our being!

40 years after I wrote these words, I decided they could easily be my retirement anthem!

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Where the Good Life Begins (1975) © T. E. Gray

AGDEm AGDEm GFBm7E

A G D Em

Weekday mornings all the freeways are jammed

People talk about the death of the land

G F

But the sign by the side of the road still says

Bm7 E

"Where the good life begins"

Now, what's the use in tradin' that life

for an American Dream you've got to lock up at night?

Behind the door to your soul it's still black as coal

So who are you foolin' with that care-laden face?

Your subscription's run out to the human race

You thought you renewed when you paid your United Way dues

But where will you go when your computer resigns

And the clock on your desk finally runs out of time?

You've got to be... You've got to be... Just be...

Alive again. A child again. Home again.

Well it's tough to plan for tomorrow's demands

if the stars won't stop to obey your commands

--and the only light you've ever seen comes from your TV screen

You had the will to live and the heart to give

'til you buried the questions you found as a kid

in that rhinestone-encrusted shrine you call your mind

You've been around for thousands of years

but your future remains a history of fears

now, isn't it time you started to find

where the good life begins?

But where will you go when your computer resigns

And the clock on your desk finally runs out of time?

You've got to be... You've got to be... Just be...

Alive again. A child again. Home again.

Nature's Song (1975) © T. E. Gray

(Also part 2 of my "retirement anthem", following Where the Good Life Begins)

AE..AEm..AG..A.. etc

Seems like I've been talkin' for a hundred years

--still haven't said a thing

I'm thinking that it's time to free my mind

--learn to hear the birds sing

Twenty years of school hasn't made the way plain;

Two thousand years of man hasn't lessened his pain

But the wind is still blowin'

waves keep rollin'

Nature's song is never broken

Winter birds headin' south toward warmer days

Graceful shadows flyin' through the city's haze

Fly away 'til morning' comes

let your wings find brighter suns

Soar above the restless sea

--let me follow and be free