Baba Brinkman - Kalevala lyrics

In Kalevala the main man's name was Väinämöinen His fame was growing in the creation of strange noises He trained his voice mainly for the sake of enjoyment And sang poignant verses without gainful employment Väinämöinen could spin a phrase in a way that venerates The first generation of men, in a wave Of inspiration that creates a sense of inner faith In the Finnish nation in the days when this sinful age Of impatient whims begins to blaze like a burning house And just like "murder will out", his verbal clout Was heard about through word of mouth From up North down to dirty South Now the young Joukahainen heard of Väinämöinen's fame And became jealous, cause he was newly trained in The same verbal games, and really, who could blame him? The fire of youth burned like a blue flame in Joukahainen Who decided to arrange a duel to attain an Even greater name than Väinämöinen, who was ancient Joukahainen's parents rebuked and forbade him To leave, but their pleas didn't do much to faze him Joukahainen amazed them and brazenly boasted "I know you both say that it's crazy and hopeless But hey, I'm not afraid to get roasted In this day and age the best way to get noticed Is to take the most famous poet's name and expose it As lame; Väinämöinen's a vain, inflated vocalist So I'll take his inflated vocal vein and explode it And someday I'll be praised, celebrated and toasted" And without wasting a moment, Joukahainen departed For Kalevala, the home of Väinämöinen, his target And, far from feint-hearted, for three days he charted His way at a hard pace and came to the unguarded Gates of the garden of Kalevala at last But he wasn't paying attention to the road, and he crashed Into Väinämöinen, who was traveling on the same path Like two locomotives head to head on train tracks Before Joukahainen even had his strength back Väinämöinen blasted him and gave him flack And asked him for his name and to explain the crash And he answered plain, "I'm the young Joukahainen And I heard there's a vacant-headed, gum-toothed vagrant With a reputation here, so I've come to defame him" Väinämöinen remained cool in the face of these rude statements Like a true statesman, and smoothly replied "I'm in no mood to be crucified For the sake of stupid pride, boy, so move aside" But Joukahainen viewed this a shrewdly disguised Attempt to neutralize his youthful stride And he refused to buy it: "Why should I move aside? I suggest we duel to decide who can best utilize Words, with verses verbally beautified To decide the dispute, and let the loser move aside" Väinämöinen sighed, "'Verbally beautified?' You certain deserve to be verbally brutalized Since you devised this war of words To satisfy your thirst to divide orators For sport; all right, fine, you're first Let's see what you got” Joukahainen's verse went like this: "My knowledge is deep I polish speech to demolish the weak When I listen to politicians' policies I fall asleep All in all I'd rather follow an ecologist's lead And listen to the swishin' of fish in the lawless seas My vision is flawless, even in the bottomless breach I see what the walrus sees, and feed on mollusc meat In the halls of seaweed the narwhal acknowledges me I perceive the raw qualities of all I can see From the beak of the bald eagle at the peak of the tallest tree To the niche of the swallow that swallows the smallest seed It all follows the pull of the dog-eat-dog creed And if you can not compete then you're obsolete So why not concede defeat and leave Kalevala to me?" Väinämöinen scoffed, "These are all falsities If your 'knowledge is deep' then it's hollow indeed All I see is a wallow of bottomless greed That colours your speech like a black shadow As your words crash and rattle; you asked for this battle So get off the path if that's the last of your babble" But Joukahainen hadn't traveled this far to get dismissed And his next verse reflected his desperate recklessness He said, "I know you're locally respected – great But it doesn't take much to see you're just a fake Like snow, I'm an avalanche; you're just a flake You get money like a church: in a collection plate I'm destined to get paid, while you're destined to beg Like a drug-addicted veteran with a prosthetic leg Allow me to demonstrate why youth is better than age I collect wages while your memories fade Intellectually I gaze on unlimited space While you're afraid and inhibited; you live in a cave This place is too big for you; it's a pitiful waste You should just give it away and start diggin' a grave" In the face of this insolent rage, Väinämöinen's Patience and poise turned to plain annoyance He said, "Trust me boy, your lust for fame is poison What's the point of making poems when you can't enjoy them? And what's the point of entertaining when you've got the lame voice Of a teenaged boy, who came to join in The game just to make noise and be a pain, showing an Absolute disdain for the ancients, going in The face of their ways and the dues paid and owing them?" Now, Joukahainen was growing impatient and sour From humiliation and shame, cause he'd wasted his power And been laid naked in the space of an hour So he tried to save face with the grace of a coward "Okay, I don't have the tricks to match wits with a lord So I guess I'll just have to ask my fists for support And strike a dissonant chord with the tip of a sword! Besides, violence is a more difficult sport So keep your piss-poor lyrics cause now this is a war!" But Väinämöinen had heard this before, and in spite Of his magnanimous nature he couldn't stand to bite His tongue, or dirty his hands in a fight So his adrenaline ran, and he began to recite Lu-e-kamme kasi katehen Sormet sormien lomahan And the land was transformed; the lake covered with waves Rocks cut away from cliffs as they started to break The sound made the ground beneath shudder and shake And the mountains rumbled, as if under the plates Lay a powerful thundercloud with a stomachache Joukahainen was afraid and he tried to run away But he suddenly felt a heavy weight on his legs And in less than a minute a lake fit for drinking Became a gray swamp with dead fish in it, stinking And in the end when Väinämöinen was finished singing Joukahainen found himself stuck in it, sinking Then his courage began shrinking and caving in And he started whimpering, thinking of nothing but saving his skin As arrogant and brave as he'd been to begin with Joukahainen now found he had to placate his nemesis Since he was in a quick-mud pit with limited Options; the stuff was too thick to swim in it He said, "I may have been a bit of a rude ba*tard Too fast to challenge the sk**s of a true master But you have to forgive me; I was enthusiastic But all I wanted to do was be like you, that's it Please don't let drown in this nasty ooze casket!" And Väinämöinen laughed, "Ooh, that's too bad kid But you have to admit, you did ask for it And now you're desperate, beggin' me to set you free I guess my question is, what's in it for me?" And Joukahainen started offering up guns and tools Horses and mules, plots of land, money and j**els As his body sank deeper under the mud of the pool But Väinämöinen wasn't moved by these petty concessions Cause he never had any use for pretty new possessions And Joukahainen knew he would never get a**istance Unless he was ready to give something really precious As he felt the wet caresses of swamp water On his neck, with his last breath he made a strong offer He said, "My father was blessed with one daughter And he taught her to cook and clean and do chores And I promise you, if you want her, she's yours I'm sure she'd rather marry you than see me a corpse Just get me out of this horrid green porridge!" And Väinämöinen smiled, utterly delighted And recited a verse, and Joukahainen glided out of the swamp And alighted on the shore, and Väinämöinen warmly invited Him to visit, once he and the boy's sister were united Joukahainen returned home, ashamed and embarra**ed And announced to his parents his sister's arranged marriage And his sister complained in badly-strained spirits Like, "Väinämöinen was old and had a strange appearance" But Joukahainen's mother just congratulated her For finding a man greater than the saps who dated her She said, "Väinämöinen is famous and has a way with words And besides, look at your father and I, we made it work" But Joukahainen's sister did not marry Väinämöinen She turned into a fish, but that's another story