[Sample: meadowlark, screen door, Ruthie reading her letter - then the record is seized] [Collage: a damaged 1959 girl-group 45 chopped apart - string swells sliced and looped over a dusty slow breakbeat, castanets stuttering, the backing girls' "ooh" cut into fragments, needle skips, her letter-voice ghosting between cuts] [Verse 1 - the young Texas lead emerges through the cuts, tape wobbling] Every Sunday I write him a letter Every Monday the mailman just smiles They tell me he's somewhere in Kansas Underneath all those beautiful miles Mama says a girl shouldn't wait so On a boy that she can't even see But he's keeping the whole world from ending And he's doing it partly for me [Collage: "partly for me" loops and pitch-drops - for me, for me, for-for me - strings reversed, dead air, then:] [The untouched record breaks through - full teenage symphony, timpani, girl-group harmonies, warm and whole] He's got sixty feet of concrete I've got sixty feet of sky He keeps the whole world safe at night I keep the porch light on (She keeps the porch light on) [Collage seizes it: "porch light" stuttered over the breakbeat, handclaps looped, tape jump, silence, the beat slams back] [Verse 2 - through the cuts, backing girls' fragments answering] I sent him a picture in April (ooh, in April) He taped it right up by the door (right by the door) He wrote that he kisses two fingers (two fingers) And taps me hello before every chore [The record breaks through again - bigger, castanets and chimes raining] He's got sixty feet of concrete I've got sixty feet of sky He keeps the whole world safe at night I keep the porch light on (She keeps the porch light on) [Everything cuts dead - heartbeat drums, one trembling looped string, crackle] [Spoken sample - quiet wonder, her real voice] Funny thing... the morning the sirens sang, I was hanging laundry. White sheets in the wind. And I remember thinking... it looked like the whole sky was waving goodbye. [Final chorus - the record tries to play but the collage is dying: slowing, warping, the backing girls dropping out one by one] He's got sixty feet of concrete I've got sixty feet of sky He kept the whole world safe at night... I kept the porch light on (She kept the porch light on) [one young voice alone through heavy crackle] I kept the porch light on [Outro - runout groove, wind, sheets flapping] [Spoken sample - soft, smiling, far away] P.S. The porch light works fine now. I leave it on.
