By Rhiannon Sue Fisk

I listen, I learn, I bristle, I burn

At the working world around me

It’s a place, I’m told, where I’ll be bought and sold

It’s a place that exists to confound me

I was raised to believe anything I could conceive

Was possible if I tried

But no one warned me that no one was for me

So now there’s blood in my eyes

Chorus:

In working my way to the middle

I’ve found some people who’ve lied

Dug in their claws, and stole the applause

So now there’s blood in my eyes

NOTES: I always describe this one as “the song that made me quit my job.”  Creative types should NOT be cubicle-ized, and while the office environment I found myself in right out of college wasn’t your typical corporate setting, the work was exactly the kind of paper-pushing banality I vowed I’d never be a part of.  I had been songwriting and performing solo around town for a year or two, so I aimed my guitar at my angst and loosed a song that, when finished, made me realize how completely my life had been taken over by my 9 to 5 misery.  Within weeks, I quit.

When I was much younger my wildest hunger

Was to be up onstage in bright lights

Now I’ve lost my way and my nine to five day

Has starved my soul with all of its might

Violin Break

The battle rages for livable wages

As we claw our way to the side

The mythical ladder much life so much sadder

Up is an anvil, down is a slide

I’m clever and useful, I never get too full

Of myself or suggestions I’ve made

But paper money and getting’ called honey

Are all I find I get paid

Chorus:

In working my way to the middle

I’ve found some people who’ve cried,

“We’re givin’ it up.  Enough is enough”

So now there’s blood in their eyes

So now there’s blood in my eyes.