[lone acoustic guitar over faint AM radio static]
(mmm... mmm...)

[Verse 1]
Before the ink, before the page,
the news arrived on a borrowed tune —
a man with a memory full of kings
singing the harvest in, singing the moon.
You could mend a net, you could stir a pot,
the song didn't care where your eyes had gone —
it skipped the thinking and found the body,
lodged in the marrow and carried on.

[Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.

[Verse 2]
They pressed the voice like a flower, flat,
between the boards of the printed word —
five hundred years of lowered eyes,
and the body barely heard.
But I had a wheel that wanted holding,
a coastline calling, a pot on the flame —
the song rode shotgun the whole way west;
it knew me before I came.

[Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.

[Verse 3]
I pulled in past the vacancy sign
where the bay sits thinking out loud,
and found the work already singing —
patient hands in a quiet crowd.
Nobody asked where the music came from;
they asked if it moved, they asked if it stayed.
I just stood where the standing was good
and added the voice I'd made.

[Bridge - percussion softens, pedal steel forward, bouts of turntablism]
We furnish tomorrow with today's chairs,
then wonder who rearranged the room.
I sent my truth down the copper wire —
it came back changed, but the change was the tune.
There's no there to get to, traveller —
just now, and now, and noon.

[Final Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.
So sing it with me, wherever you're standing —
now is the only where.

[Outro]
[instruments thin to guitar and static]
If you're hearing this, I'm already fading —
a song is a thing that ends.
Sing it again, I'll be standing beside you:
now, again.
Now, again.