Oh, you can't look back when you're movin' on
Oh, you can't look back, buddy, you've got to go and sing your song.
Where did they go, all the good times I used to know?
Long time ago I loved a woman, I loved a woman, never let her know.
< slightly altered repeat of chorus>
Stumble and fall, I'm not the man that I was at all.
Words on the wall, I do believe, I do believe I might have blown it all.
All lyrics copyright John Stewart
Still in the present - a driving rhythm represents the need to move on and escape from the past (like 'Shackles and Chains'). But linked to this assertion is the claim that you 'gotta go and sing your songs' (ie come to terms with the past through art). The past is again seen from a double perspective -good times but also lost love. Only through song can you come to terms with what has made you what you are (your past/bloodlines). Song is itself a paradox. It's at once fixed (in notes and recording) and also living (through re-performance). So it keeps the double perspective of enshrining the past and criticising it from a future perspective. Song itself is a temporal process (taking so many minutes to sing)- not a static one. The images recounted though are often static still lives (as memory often is). These different facets only show that the past is inevitably coloured by what has gone since - it's this journey and reflection that the album is about.