Lyrics Holy Elixir - Kate Tempest, Kae Tempest

Holy Elixir

I touch the beginning\nAnimating animals and tree Gods\nScratching out legends in cave walls\nThe days pour down into nights as we watched\nWe mapped stars with peaks, we fought beasts\nWe caught food for the feast\nAnd we walked to a breast to receive the bound wheat\nThe grass, black and strange\nAs we razed plains to ash\nWe laid claims, exchanged grains, and made pacts\nAnd we clashed, and we strained, and the rains lashed\nThe young maids were brave, but they were made to lay flat\nThe old ways were too ingrained to make the reins snap\nWe laid traps\nWe gave our names back to the Saints\nWe sang out thanks and complaints\nWe burned fat, arranged bones into flames\nEach bird a great catch\nOur songs were spells, and our spells were plain facts\nShe laid down in the road where the people go by\nAnd declared herself willing to try\nI laid down beside her\nBut all I could see were the feet as they walked over me\nThat’s when she told me, «I was holy elixir»\nShe said «I thought I knew the world, but it was only a picture»\nShe said «We're all written in the holiest scripture\nIt’s just we’re living in this time that says no inhibitions\nGet yours, keep going the distance, no limits\nAnd don’t bother protesting because nobody listens\nBesides, all your solutions dissolve under scrutiny\nAnd you can’t stand a note of derision\nInstead, seek approval to justify your existence\nHave opinions, but have no resolve or conviction\nJust keep your head down\nBreathe the fumes and indulge your addictions\nRoutine is healthy, ignore the affliction\nThe cost to the soul and the constant constriction\nDon’t consider too closely, have no intermission\nKeep throwing your fists in slow repetition\nMost of us manage, what makes you so different?\nNow, you seem a bright spark\nGo ahead, take the road with the pilgrims\nHead for the temples of democracy\nFreedom, growth, reason, liberty, hope\nBut don’t pay attention to what’s hanging from the rope»\nShe said, «Decode the language, unfold the symbols\nI’m told disciples got lost in the hillside\nFollowing intellect, they let go of wisdom\nAnd now they’ll tell you the soul’s a closed system\nThey sacrificed instinct to phony ambition\nAnd now what they hold in their fist has become all that there is\nBut total existence needs meaning and myth\nMany misjudged the way and got lost in the mist\nYour loneliness is the symptom, not the sickness»\nThe moment her lips said «peace,» my peace melted\nI became a memory, I felt myself peel\nI was atoms, Magnesium, Calcium\nI was real\nShe said, «We are born of collision\nWe are divisions of a bigger vision\nAnd yet, we run around like hamsters\nSpinning the wheel\nSpinning the wheel\nSpinning the wheel»\nI was on my knees then, begging for pardon\nI was old and clothed in white garments\nIn a vast red desert where the rocks were dark blue and varnished\nAnd a voice said, «This is the garden\nNow you better start sowing or there won’t be a harvest»\nI came to under a domed roof\nThe light was cold and clear and fragmented\nThere was people, moving, I watched them\nI saw a muscle of school girls performing\nI saw the ticket woman massaging the small of her back\nAnd a young gent, neat as a crease in his work clothes\nAnd the light, light as breath on the dirty, old track