[Spoken, low, piano alone] The turpentine cut the stench of the Gowanus Canal, that stew outside my window. Third floor. A painting facing the wall. Cheap rent was the draw. Frank climbs past the customers to look at the back of it. [Verse 1] Frank said, "Turn it around." I said, "It isn't done." He said, "Nothing's done. Turn it around." Twelve people, no faces, a cloud on top. He said, "That's not abstract, Andrew. That's witness protection." [Chorus] Where are you in the painting. Where are you in the paint. people and places, no faces Where are you? [Verse 2] Where I'm from the boys play football. The girls get pregnant. The priest gets an altar boy. One road out, the Turnpike. Up is New York. Down is Baltimore. [Verse 3] I went down. Baltimore had charm and poverty. I came back up, a hayseed from a small town with a duffel and a lease On a crack house along the Gowanus Canal. Third floor, north light, water the color of a bruise. [Verse 4] The man who tried to cure me had a ficus and a fish tank. He said pray on it, son, and think about football. And so I played football for the coach I was 14 and all I thought about was the running back. His ass like a peach I’d like to bite into. Three minutes. I knew exactly what I was and his cure wasn’t [Verse 5] Keith Haring came out of Kutztown, Pennsylvania. Chalk on a subway wall. Famous at twenty-four. Dead at thirty-one. I had oils and a door with a lock. Frank said, "Brave. Who's the audience? The radiator?" [Instrumental Break, viola, soft brushes] [Bridge, slower, almost spoken] He painted the epidemic right into the frame. Everyone else wanted it out of sight. He said, "Hiding's a full-time job, Andrew. And you're not even getting paid." Then he stopped joking. "You're more ambitious than I am. Paint our lives. Who else is going to?" [Verse 6] We'd been over for years. Frank died April twenty-third, two thousand two. The question stayed and moved in like a roommate. Ate my food. Never paid the rent. [Final Chorus, quieter] Where are you in the painting. Right here, in the gray and the green. I took the trowel to the faces. Twelve people. Look close. That's me. [Spoken, one piano chord] Somebody had to. Thank you Frank.
