It looks like I succeeded in writing a relatively happy song that doesn’t include death or murder, but still, somehow bones managed to work their way into it. I really do wish I could write a song without mentioning bones, but apparently I can’t. Before bones, it was ice and people dying from hypothermia. Why the obsession with uncuddly white things? I don’t know, but hopefully I will grow out of it.
I have been learning a little bit about bones recently- dinosaur bones. I was trying to celebrate the dullest time of year (I mean that as a complement) by learning about the most boring thing I could imagine, which for me was dinosaurs. But I have to say, once I knew a little more about them, they no longer seemed so boring. What I like most about them is how they opened my mind to larger cycles of time- deep time, as paleontologists call it. It’s a refreshing antidote to the “shallow time” perspective of our culture, which encourages us to see each decade as a major historical epoch.
Bone to Bone
People say you are the dark one
dim and dusty, cold and hard one
dry and scaly skin
blood so sour and thin
draw the curtains and let our time begin
Bone to bone now
in a dark room
press your forehead to mine
let the world resume
let them stick to their ways
I will come out changed
I will speak my mind and I
won’t care what they say
People tell me you’re a creep
you tell me people are sheep
I believe you will outlast them
watching from your mountain so steep
Your room so dark and blue
the whole world is a shadow to you
your bones they bear the lines of
every tooth that sank into you
Claw marks across your arm
why did they mean you harm?
you with a spine so straight that I
I cling to your arm
Outside the winds derange, but I
I will come out changed
I can feel your bones upon me now
so cold and so strange
Let the vinegar spill out
let it roll down your chin
let me hear your blackest words now
let your long long story begin
Nights in the jungle survived
you are the one who came out alive
dipped in blood you walked back home
so thin but swollen with pride
Your blood in my veins, I
I will come out changed
I will laugh at all of their words
I won’t care what they
Your hand on my hand now I
I can see through your eyes
all the chains were only shadows
all the flags were only their lies
The imprint of your bones
like an angel to follow me home
you will always be beside me
blood to blood and bone to bone.
Download Mp3: Bone to Bone