Running Away with What Freud Said

Running Away with What Freud Said
Album	Taboo VI: The Homecoming
Released	1991
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	1:35
Next track	"Ice Cream, Cobra Man"

Running Away with What Freud Said is the first song on The Mountain Goats' first cassette, Taboo VI: The Homecoming.

Lyrics

Big city, wide corner
New flowers, cold comfort.
56 Fahrenheit early in the morning
Buses passing by black smoke in their wake
Big surprises, a lot of big surprises
Bones ringing, running away with what Freud said

Same morning, world breathing
Far, far from home
Big ringing in the bones
Whose bones are these? God please
Feel the pumping, feel the fresh blood pump inside
City's living, the city's truly living 
What's the difference? Running away with what Freud said

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song

• "Okay, so the song is about how I had this real bad blackout when I lived in Portland, I was kind of a mess up there, and I had this blackout where when I came to I didn't know what day it was, and I think I'd been out for four or five days, but I had it in my mind that I'd been out for longer than that. So elected to stay in the house longer until I could figure out what day it was. This was not really too bright, but...so, but I was there for a couple more days convinced that, you know, convinced that I was [unintelligible] and I was pretty crazy, and finally I was like 'Well fuck it, I'm goin' outside!' And I combed my hair and I put on my hat and my sunglasses with which I did not leave the house, and I walked outside, and it wasn't cold anymore as it had been when I blacked out. And I looked around, and they'd put flowers in the planters in downtown Portland. And I was like...it was like the whole world was transformed, and it wasn't my body anymore because—and this is what the line 'whose bones are these?' is in the song, is because my hip was clicking. It clicked for another two years, the hip. That's the end of that story." -- 2006-06-13 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, CA

Live Shows this Song Was Played at

• 2002-03-08 - WNUR Session - Evanston, IL
• 2006-06-13 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, CA
• 2007-03-03 - Doug Fir Lounge - Portland, OR
• 2007-03-07 - The Independent - San Francisco, CA
• 2014-06-15 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, CA
• 2016-02-28 - Noise Pop 2016 - Swedish American Hall - San Francisco, CA
• 2018-08-10 - Facebook Live Stream - San Francisco, CA
• 2019-09-10 - Aladdin Theater - Portland, OR
• 2019-09-16 - House of Blues - Anaheim, CA
• 2020-02-20 - Swedish American Hall - San Francisco, CA
• 2021-09-21 - Tellus360 - Lancaster, PA
• 2022-09-22 - The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC

Videos of this Song

• 2018-08-10 - Facebook Live Stream - San Francisco, CA