Fast City Living – Song Description
“Lost in motion, this bustling town.” I wrote this one quickly, almost in a single sitting, without the slower, more deliberate process I gave most of the other songs in this collection, and I think the pace of the writing ended up doing some of the same work the lyric itself is trying to describe. The song doesn’t really pause anywhere to reflect carefully on the rush it’s depicting, because pausing to reflect carefully would have worked against exactly the exhausting, forward-tumbling momentum it’s trying to capture. It’s a short, impressionistic sketch rather than a considered argument, and I think that’s the right shape for it, even though almost everything else in this book has argued in favour of slowness, patience, and taking real time over things. Occasionally the honest version of a feeling is the rushed one, and trying to slow this particular song down to match the more careful pace of the rest of the collection would have made it less true to what it’s actually about, not more.
Verse 1
Lights that blind
Crowds that rush
Noise and speed
Never enough
Chorus
Fast city living
No time to stay
Moving forward
Day by day
Verse 2
Horn and hustle
Concrete skies
Dreams of freedom
Passing by
Chorus
Fast city living
No time to stay
Moving forward
Day by day
Bridge
Moments fleeting
Hearts confined
Chasing shadows
Hard to find
Outro
Fast city living
Can’t slow down
Lost in motion
This bustling town
Lyrics – Michael Forty