This song is from my new album, Five Thousand Feathers, available at: https://helenbell.bandcamp.com/album/five-thousand-feathers

Helen Bell: lyrics, music, vocal, keyboard, recorders, violas Xenogon: drums, bass guitar

Filmed by Xenogon Video editing by Helen Bell and Xenogon

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Website: https://www.helenbell.co.uk Bandcamp: https://helenbell.bandcamp.com Fediverse: @helenbellmusic@sunny.garden

Lyrics:

Quite unexpectedly here I stand among the last thousand left on earth So far removed from the illusion we were born into In all the dissonance will we understand That a record of our footsteps is something we should hold onto? And would we search for every scrap of what we once discarded? Build a salvage-library to keep our fading knowledge safely guarded

But it’s all gone quiet
Though there’s no solace in the mud We have to try it
Now all our systems and our crimes Are lying scattered by the flood There are paths to our survival in the new and the archival A misjudgement in their balance a risk of nothing left But a sun-scorched song of sorrow in a moment as we wander Through the puzzles of the free and bereft

If we could realign the shards of what we used to think They’ll be bound for annotation in the Institute of Things We Must Not Do And in that mausoleum in the quiet dark Illuminate our errors and our shame to inform the new But for now all take a hold of every rag and every question that we find So much truth to excavate and so many wounds to bind