[Sample: "Mail came down, Dale." - paper unfolding - "It's from Ruthie." - her faraway voice - then the record is seized] [Collage: a dusty country-waltz 78 chopped apart - pedal steel sliced into single sighs looped over a slow dusty breakbeat, upright bass notes repeating, needle skips, the crooner's words cut to stutters] [Verse 1 - the weathered singer emerges through the cuts, tape wobbling between lines] Walt was born where the wheat runs flat Nineteen and a duffel and a service cap They handed him a key and a folding bed And a hundred feet of ladder going down instead [Collage: "down instead" loops - down-down-down instead - pedal steel reversed, dead air, then the record returns] [The untouched record breaks through - full waltz, two voices in close harmony, warm and whole] So here's to the quiet, boys, here's to the hum Here's to the mornings that never quite come Here's to the wheat up above us in the sun May we never be needed, and may it never be done [Collage seizes it: "never be needed" stuttered and pitch-dropped, handclaps looped, tape jump, silence, beat slams back] [Verse 2 - through the cuts, her sample ghosting behind him] She writes me every Sunday, hair tied in a bow Sixty feet of sky in every word, you know I keep her by the blast door, I tap her hello She says the porch light's burning, she leaves it on for me And some nights I can see it, clear through the concrete A little yellow window at the top of the sea [The record breaks through again - fuller, a barroom of ghosts joining] So here's to the quiet, boys, here's to the hum Here's to the mornings that never quite come Here's to the wheat up above us in the sun May we never be needed, and may it never be done [Sample: teletype - every loop stops dead] [Bridge - no collage now, terribly still: one guitar, one voice, vinyl crackle] It was a Tuesday morning when the teletype woke Walt read it twice over and neither of us spoke He looked across the console at his oldest friend Put his hand on the key like a thousand drills again [Spoken sample - quiet, human] ...Turn with me, Dale. [Final chorus - the record tries to play but the collage is dying: slowing, warping, voices dropping out] So here's to the quiet, boys, here's to the hum Here's to the mornings that never quite come Here's to the wheat up above us... burning in the sun May we never be needed... [one voice alone through heavy crackle, breaking] ...and may it never be done [Outro - runout groove loop, wind] [Spoken sample - her voice, far away, warm] P.S. The porch light works fine now. I leave it on.
