From Beneath the Stage

[Intro] [Wurlitzer Theatre organ tremolo, low pedal swell, bellows breathing] I found her voice before I found her name. A single note left hanging in an empty house. I followed it down through the ropes and the dark, past every seat where nobody sat, until the sound and I were the only ones left breathing. [Verse 1] The critics called her adequate. The house was half asleep by the second act. I sat in the dark and heard what none of them could - a voice built to outlast a century that couldn't hear it. So I built her a century of my own. [Verse 2:] I catalogued every seat by who left first. I know which row stood before the final bow, which usher yawned through her best entrance, which critic checked his watch on the top note she held longest. I wrote none of it down. I didn't need to. I already knew who deserved to keep her. [Pre-Chorus] I gave the note a home. I gave the home a lock. A home with no door is only another room to fear. [Chorus] Down here, I keep the sound. Down here, I keep it safe. Down here, applause never need end. Down here, nothing has to leave. Wind the wheel. Hold the note. Down here, she never has to leave. [Verse 3] I learned her breath better than she knew it herself - where it caught, where it thinned, where it forgot to be careful. I have four hundred versions of one Thursday in October. I have never once asked which one was true. [Bridge] [Clockwork waltz surges, relays ticking faster, organ straining] Some nights the wax remembers wrong. Some nights it gives me a note she never sang. I play it anyway. I have played it so many times I no longer remember which note was hers and which one I taught the machine to miss her by. [Verse 4] There is a version of this where I gave the wheel back. I have played that version too. In it the house lights come up and she walks out into them and someone else's hands are the ones that catch her coat, and I am down here alone with four hundred Thursdays and none of them are her. I do not play that version often. I do not play it well. [Final Chorus] [full gothic swell, voice fraying] Down here, I keep the sound. Down here, I keep it safe. Down here, applause need never end. Down here, nothing has to leave. Wind the wheel. Hold the note. Down here, I never have to leave. [Outro] [Organ winding down, one relay still ticking, then stops] One more turn of the wheel. One more note. The house upstairs has closed for the night. Down here, it is always still playing.