Where the hell have all my old friends gone?
Where did they hide when our twenties were spent?
Because I ain’t done being young,
No I ain’t done with that yet.
I don’t care if you all think I’m wrong.
I don’t care what those other people say.
Because I ain’t done being young,
No, today is not that day.
Centuries turn but Fate tends to twist,
Forget the hand of time,
Worry more about its fists
Because its dice are all loaded
And I ain’t hedging my bets,
I ain’t done,
I ain’t done being young just yet.
I ain’t done with the doing,
I ain’t turning out the light,
I will not go gentle into that good night,
My rack it ain’t ruined,
My race it ain’t run,
I ain’t done, I ain’t done, I ain’t done.
Beware of that happy little bubble you’ve bought
Because a safety net is just like any other net
When you are caught.
And though I know
Every deed has a debt,
I ain’t done,
I ain’t done being young just yet.
No one yearns for Summer
Until they’ve felt the chill,
Just like any guilty pleasure
Depends mostly on the Guilt.
So we pass the time
Between us like a bomb,
Screaming I ain’t done
I ain’t done being young.
I ain’t done with potential
And I don’t care who agrees
Because I ain’t ready to start living
My death by degrees.
My tide ain’t stemmed
And my spin ain’t spun,
I ain’t done, I ain’t done, I ain’t done
I ain’t done, I ain’t done.
Maybe I wanted kids of my own.
Maybe that’s one little thing I regret.
But I ain’t done being young,
No I ain’t done with that yet.
So smother your sympathy
And reign in your remorse,
Don’t talk to me of “middle age”
Call it “the main course”
Because only lovers settle down
And only gamblers settle up,
I ain’t done being young
I ain’t ever going to stop.
I ain’t done with the folly,
I ain’t done with the fight,
I’m living tall as a story,
I’m living broad as daylight.
So unsheathe your daggers
And unfurl your cloaks
And save me a seat
In a hell that’s well stoked.
Tend to the weeds
That have grown around your thoughts
Fasten the tight ropes and pull them up taut.
Set us on a course for where the sun never sets,
Cos I ain’t done I ain’t done I ain’t done
I ain’t done I ain’t done I ain’t done
I ain’t done being young just yet.
I’ve never been that good at being young. Once I left school I mostly hid my face under a beard or moustache. Admittedly I spent a few years as a skinny, long-haired, leather-jacketed member of a rock band called The Derelicts, but after the gigs I tended to go back to the singer’s house and drink wine rather than go off with the bassist to take drugs. Even as a child I was more interested in books than playing games. I rarely had muddy shins and grazed knees.
But then one day you’re sitting on an aeroplane and it dawns on you that the cabin crew never invite you to look at the cockpit anymore. And you realise you’re balding and you notice your eyebrows look like two dragon flies have crashed into your forehead and there are long strands of white in your beard. And you think: “This wasn’t my decision. Whose decision was this?”
Songs often come in pairs for me. The seed of an idea can germinate in a number of different ways, following different lines of reason or fantasy. A song is rarely the simple imprint of a single thought. The day I wrote the bones of this tune I also wrote a poem called To Hell With Youth, which took a diametrically opposed view. But this is the composition that stuck; this is the one I felt meant something. Its sulkier twin withered into a crooked thing and now lies forgotten in a drawer somewhere.
I wrote I Ain’t Done during a week of enforced solitude directly after shooting the video for Deep Enough from Memoir Noir, in which I shaved off my beard and hair. I didn’t want anyone to see what I looked like, so I took a budget flight to France and holed up there. As well as trying to preserve the shock of the reveal, I also felt the need to quietly reacquaint myself with a face I hadn’t seen (in that manifestation) since I was about seventeen. Looking in the mirror was like looking back in time… but also not.
A lot of the tracks on this album tackle the subject of growing up (something that rock musicians do their best to avoid). This song is obviously the most overt example. Age has nothing to do with it really, though; it’s about control. I’ll be damned if someone else is going to decide how I should behave. So what if I didn’t build many sandcastles when I was a boy? I’ll damn well build one now if I feel like it. And live in a treehouse if I want to.
