Song Description
[Please keep in mind I wrote these lyrics in the depth of the Bush administration's years in Washington.]
This is actually a song about the end of an empire, but I use the images of nature's potential to create and destroy to blur the picture. Every great society follows a cycle- like the seasons. Birth, growth, peak and crash. Spring, summer, fall and winter. Egypt, Rome, The Ottomans, The Soviets. One day, the flags this American empire will fall, too. I hope it is in the distant future! Nevertheless, I was using this scenario to frame a story and speak 2 messages. (1)If everything is taken from you, it is easier to let go if you don't have very much. Or more importantly, if you have little attachment to the things you own. (2)In the end, no matter the way things change (revolution, repopulation, immigration or the recent election of Barack Obama);it is always the youth- strong and ripe with fresh ideas- that build a new paradigm and recreate our society.
Song Length |
4:16 |
Genre |
Pop - Rock, Rock - General |
Similar Artists |
Toad The Wet Sprocket, John Mayer |
Language |
English |
Era |
2000 and later |
| |
Lyrics
I see a haze, smoke in the valley. Can't you just smell the breeze, the spectral trees, a paper sky. Hold me against the sun and shine right thru me, all of the colors of a life gone by. No longer days of sleepy sunshine, can't you just sense the yawning? Evening is nigh. I'll stand against the winter. Drift into me. All of these frozen daggers grace my eyes.
So wash the flags away.
Stark shadows standing tall.
Reborn into the day.
We rise into the fall.
The river flies, down in the valley. Can't you just hear it sing, the snow it brings from mountains high. I'll wade into the flood, just watch it fill me. Once, from the snowfields to the oceans wide...
How long, how long?
Can we hold this strong?
Everything and every thing you know.
Let go.
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