"Think I'll come back here again, every now and then, from time to time"
The Annotated "Born Cross-Eyed"
"Born Cross-Eyed"
Words by Robert Weir
in the sweet by-and-by
about the time the sun rises west
Recorded on Anthem of the Sun
This version included on What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been
Deadbase lists nine performances, all in 1968.
The song has reappeared in live performances in 2002 by The Other Ones!
Blair Jackson, in The Music Never Stopped , quotes an interview with Weir in Crawdaddy , in which Weir says the song didn't come out the way he wanted. (How's that for third-hand info?)
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 14:52:23 -0500
From: Bruce Thomas
The annotated Dead Lyrics are great. Under "Born Cross Eyed" , might it help to note that Buckminster Fuller was born that way? He either wrote an article or delivered a speech with that title or phrase in it, which I ran across years after I got into this song. He attributed the uniqueness of his theories to the difference in perception that arose from being born that way.
Could that be an influence?
brucet@usm.maine.edu
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 7:56 AM
Subject: Lyrics
I continue to enjoy browsing your annotated Dead lyrics site. I was looking at Born Cross-Eyed and noticed you didn't mention that Bob Weir is dyslexic. Don't you think there is some kind of connection -- you know, the part about the sun rising in the west?
A reference to the song "In the Sweet Bye-and-Bye", by Samuel Fillmore Bennett and Joseph P. Webster.
A synonym for "never",or for a lie, used repeatedly in the folksong tradition:
"Bird In a Cage"
"Blackwaterside"
"False True Love"
"False Young Man"
First posted: June 30, 1995
Last revised: November 27, 2002