Music and lyrics by Damon Waitkus

Lyrics

Strange that this place doesn’t spook me out,
but it doesn’t:
working the night shift locked away
under government ground,
roaming the stacks in a library of numbers,
feeding and changing all the big
number crunchers:
fear would be a signal
coming over the horizon.

Sometimes I wander to the heart of the “black forest”
where a sage sits in silicon
with its head in an eastern desert.
You know you can’t beat a steam drill
with a single iron spike,
so you lay down your tools and wait.
And the clouds are blowing by
—because I can feel them blowing by—
If I could read, I would read them blowing by.

I know there is a language for the alphabet of weather.
I know that there are curves behind the numbers that I enter,
but you don’t get the vision of a raptor in the desert
without the hunger of a raptor.

There was a kid who worked here
who used to walk out in the hallways
and look at the postings on the doors:
bits of articles, cartoons and epigrams.
Dürer’s rhinoceros kept him coming back.
He said “I’ll never know how he could capture
such a likeness without ever laying eyes on one.”

I dreamed of a legless buffalo
as I nodded off for a moment
a couple of hours before the dawn;
I felt a piercing gaze lift me from my chair,
I felt the tail wag the dog.
Wait a minute now:
What resolution will turn a map to territory,
will melt spirit from the stones?
And the clouds are blowing by
—because I can feel them blowing by—
If I could count I would count them blowing by.

There is no end to it.
My hands are busy, busy
ticking off seconds, seconds.
At dawn, when I roll down the mountain,
I don’t watch the road, I only look to the plains
where the sun appears at the head of a fleet of balloons
and I laugh, because it burns like a myth,
it howls like a bomb in the pit of my stomach
and I don’t know what’s coming.

Take this hammer, bring it to my captain,
tell him I’m gone.

Personnel

Damon Waitkus – lead and backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, hammer dulcimers, mandolin, guzheng, piano, percussion, electric taishogoto, glockenspiel, flute, whistle, synth
Emily Packard – violin, viola
Kate McLoughlin – bassoon
Jason Hoopes – bass
Jordan Glenn – drums, percussion, accordion
Thea Kelley – lead and backing vocals
Victor Reynolds – recorders, 12-string electric guitar, backing vocals
Ivor Holloway – alto and tenor saxophones
Josh Packard – cello