Unholy Elixir - Kate Tempest, Kae Tempest

I touch the beginning

Animating animals and tree gods

Scratching out legends in cave walls

The days pour down into night as we watched

We mapped stars and peaks, we fought beasts

We caught food for the feast

And we walked two abreast to receive the bound wheat

The grass, black and strange

As we razed plains to ash

We laid claim, we exchanged grains, and we made pacts

And we clashed, and we strained, and the rains lashed

The young maids were brave, but they were made to lay flat

The old ways were too ingrained to make the reins snap

So we laid traps

We gave our names back to the saints

We sang out thanks and complaints

We burned fat, arranged bones in the flames

Each bird a great catch

Our songs were spells, and our spells were plain facts

She laid down in the road where the people go by

And she declared herself willing to try

I laid down beside her

But all I could see were the feet as they walked over me

That’s when she told me I was holy elixir

She said, «I thought I knew the world, but it was only a picture»

She said, «We're all written in the holiest scripture

It’s just we’re living in this time that says no inhibitions

Get yours, keep going the distance, no limits

And don’t bother protesting because nobody listens

Besides, all your solutions dissolve under scrutiny

You can’t stand a note of derision

Instead, seek approval to justify your existence

Have opinions, but have no resolve or conviction

Just keep your head down

Breathe the fumes and indulge your addictions

Routine is healthy, ignore the affliction

The cost to the soul and the constant constriction

Don’t consider too closely, have no intermission

Keep throwing your fists in slow repetition

Most of us manage, what makes you so different?

What makes you so different?

What makes you so

Now, you seem a bright spark

Go ahead, take the road with the pilgrims

Head for the temples of democracy

Freedom, growth, reason, liberty, hope

But don’t pay attention to what’s hanging from the rope

Decode the language, unfold the symbols

I’m told disciples got lost in the hillside

Following intellect, they let go of wisdom

Now they’ll tell you the soul’s a closed system

They sacrificed instinct to phony ambition

Now what they hold in their fists has become all that there is

But total existence needs meaning and myth

Many misjudged the way and got lost in the mist»

She said, «Your loneliness is the symptom, not the sickness»

And the moment her lips said «peace,» my peace melted

I became a memory, I felt myself peel

I was atoms, I was Magnesium, I was Calcium

I was real

She said, «We are born of collision

We are divisions of a bigger vision

And yet, we run around like hamsters spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel

Spinning the wheel»

I was on my knees then, I was begging for pardon

I was old and I was clothed in white garments

In a vast red desert where the rocks were dark blue and varnished

That’s when the voice said, «This is the garden

Now, you better start sowing or there won’t be a harvest»