Make Me a Mask
 

Written by L. Buckingham

Make me a mask That I can wear 'Til day is done The wind in the trees The falling leaves The world's spinning Make me a mask So I can laugh 'Til nighttime comes No more can I stay How long must I play This game of winning? If I had known this was only a dream I would have wakened from this sleep Make me a mask So I can last 'Til the right time comes A tear in my eye To light I fly An end is beginning

 


WEBMISTRESS speculates:

This song was written around the time Mirage was released, and at this time Lindsey was VERY unhappy musically, feeling constrained and perhaps even unappreciated since he was getting a hard time from the rest of the band about Tusk. As a result, Mirage is his least favorite FM album. In this song, he's saying that he feels like being with the band is a drudgery and in order to deal with it, he wishes he could have a "mask" that would hide all his frustrations. Time is passing, the "world's spinning", and he's just waiting at this point, biding his time until it's over (shades of Countdown here). He's saying he wants to leave FM; he doesn't want to "play this game of winning" anymore (there's that winning theme again so prevalent in Stevie's and Lindsey's music, such as in Go Insane, Rhiannon, and countless others).

His line that says "if I had known this was only a dream, I would have wakened" is interesting - it seems a response to all Stevie's dream-references in songs like Outside the Rain. He's being sarcastic - if this is a dream like Stevie keeps saying, he wants to be woken up! And in another sense, he could be saying that if love with Stevie was only an impossible dream, he just wants to give up - "wake up" - and move on with his life (and from FM). He's just waiting for the "right time" and then that's it.

The last three lines will be echoed in spirit when Lindsey actually does leave FM in the song Don't Look Down. He's going to leave FM and "fly" to the light - as he says in the last line, "an end is beginning." In other words, it's only a matter of time before Lindsey's outta here (ok, so it took him a few more years). A little editorial on the end - I REALLY hate this song's tune, it sounds like something out of the Beatles' "fascination with the east" era and is right down there with Play in the Rain on my least of least-favorite Lindsey songs. Just thought I'd get that off my chest.

 

25 Years - The Chain | BN Albums