Just A Little Light

Lyrics: John Barlow
Music: Brent Mydland

John Perry Barlow had this to say in his book "Mother American Night":

"Brent and I has afternoons where we wrote four or five songs together in his house in Martinez in the East Bay. It absolutely helped that he was a piano player, but I also had complete faith in his ability to take my lyrics and sing them in the melody I had in mind.

"That was what happened on "Just A Little Light," which is about the gloom that seemed to be gathering around Brent and Jerry and everything that was then going on backstage at Dead shows. I wanted people to know that there was also still a light left in the world. I was writing about what happens to everyone after a while. Like Hunter's line in "Scarlet Begonias," "Once in a while you get shown the light / In the strangest of places if you look at it right." Although I wasn't consciously quoting that, it is one of my favorite Hunter lines."

Well there ain't nobody safer than someone who doesn't care
And it isn't even lonely when no-one's ever there
I had a lot of dreams once, but some of them came true
The honey's sometimes bitter when fortune falls on you
So you know I've been a soldier in the armies of the night
And I'll find the fatal error in what's otherwise all right
But now you're trembling like a sparrow, I will try with all my might
To give you just a little sweetness
Just a little light

I have always heard that virtue ought to be its own reward
But it never comes so easy when you're living by the sword
It's even harder to be heartless when you look at me that way
You're as mighty as the flower that will grow the stones away
Even though I've been a stranger full of irony and spite
Holding little but contempt for all things beautiful and bright
Something shines around you and it seems, to my delight
To give me just a little sweetness
Just a little light

It could be just another highway coiled up in the night
You could be just another white-tail, baby, stranded on my brights
There's a tingling recognition like the sound of distant thunder
And I begin to wonder if the love I've driven under won't ignite