Habit of Alone long version

Grew up in a small town in Tennessee.

We moved there back in nineteen-sixty-five.

Summer, the temperature was just beastly

I felt so bad I think I could've died.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

It's not that I left friends in Detroit.

Few teachers there come inside my mind.

It's not the weather that I enjoyed.

I can't recall anything of that kind.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

I was a boy with a habit of alone

In a house without a secret place.

I had nowhere to call my very own.

A soybean field became my borrowed space.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

Found my bunker for the war in my head.

Found my castle where I served as a knight.

Found my spaceship that through the heavens sped.

Imagination was my story of life.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

I grew away from the soybeans and the town,

Made it to the world and new secret places.

Made friends and loved ones, smiles and frowns,

And had my share monumental disgraces.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

That was many years ago, nearly a lifetime.

Imagination frequently my only friend.

But I'd not trade a moment of my prime,

Or a single moment up till the very end.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.