[Intro – Spoken Word]
[brushed drums, low slide guitar]
New shirt, old denim jacket.
Letters across the chest like a dare.
The spell-check wants a word with me.
I tell it: let it stand.

[Verse 1]
I found a word in a dead man's tongue
that means the ground you trust —
episteme, a place to stand,
and doxa, just the dust.
I kinda got it, couldn't hold it,
a ladder missing rungs,
so I pressed it onto cotton, one letter wrong,
and wore it on my lungs.

[Pre-Chorus]
Ask the machine what I am —
it says I study bugs,
or chart a fever through the town.
Close enough. Doubt is both.

[Chorus]
Journeyman epistomologist,
one letter loose where the footing is.
The red pen circles — I mark it stet:
built it on the rock, it's standing yet.
I don't stand over what I know,
I stand among it, and I don't let go.

[Verse 2]
[piano enters, sparse]
Dropped my keys out past the dark
where the streetlight doesn't go,
and I searched the bright like everybody does,
'cause the bright is all we know.
You can grep the gravel under the lamp
till the dawn comes ashen-grey,
but the lock you need is over there —
in the dark, ten feet away.

[Chorus]
Journeyman epistomologist,
one letter loose where the footing is.
The red pen circles — I mark it stet:
stand it on rock, it's standing yet.
I don't stand over what I know,
I stand among it, and I don't let go.

[Bridge]
[Half Time]
At the river they make you say the word,
at the roadblock, walk the line,
count the r's in strawberry —
they swear it proves a mind.
But the test wore out the day we learned it,
the dial's been dead for years.
Everybody reads it anyway.
Belief outlives its gears.

[Verse 3]
[groove returns, fuller]
I walked it into the corner bar
where the working men all drink —
torque by feel, a lambing hour,
which beam will bear, which boats will sink.
Nobody asked about the shirt.
A welder bought me one.
Said, [spoken gruff male voice] "Spelled wrong, son." I said, [Eli Mercer Male voice] "I know."
He nodded.
[Male/female duet]
Exam done.

[Final Chorus]
Journeyman epistomologist,
one letter loose where the footing is.
The rain came down, the creek ran high —
the house on the rock stayed dry.
I don't stand over what I know,
I stand among it, and I won't let go.

[Outro]
[instruments thin out, voice close]
Apprentice copies, master preaches,
journeyman walks between.
Less wrong than yesterday —
that's all the creed I mean.