Verse 1 Skinner watched the pigeon turn and said the mind's a place we learn to name what no one else can see — a tact for what we cannot be. The inner voice that won't stay still, that edits, revises, fits the bill, was shaped by marks on flattened page, the literate self, the verbal cage. Chorus But somewhere there's a fire burning low, where bodies speak what words don't know, where Abbi waits and the present lands, and meaning lives in eyes and hands. We didn't lose it, just forgot — the campfire's real, the ghost is not. Verse 2 Ong said writing technologized the word, and something ancient went unheard — the situated, breathing, story told not to be analyzed but to hold. The hard problem Wittgenstein traced was language chasing its own face, a ghost it summoned, couldn't name, philosophy and culture's game. Chorus But somewhere there's a fire burning low, where bodies speak what words don't know, where Abbi waits and the present lands, and meaning lives in eyes and hands. We didn't lose it, just forgot — the campfire's real, the ghost is not. Verse 3 Barrett builds the feeling from the inside out, construction all the way, no hidden doubt, the pain that walks on six broken ribs is shaped by every story culture gives. And Kimmerer speaks in animate tongue, where bay and lichen, old and young, are living nouns that don't stand still — the grammar holds what we can't will. Chorus But somewhere there's a fire burning low, where bodies speak what words don't know, where Abbi waits and the present lands, and meaning lives in eyes and hands. We didn't lose it, just forgot — the campfire's real, the ghost is not. Verse 4 So Wittgenstein gave away his gold and couldn't live the truth he told — insight alone won't build the ground, the repertoire's in what's around. The path leads out through hands and soil, through present weight and honest toil, through people gathered, fire lit, through practice more than talking it. You've been outside the house your whole life long — that's not a flaw, that's where you belong. Final Chorus There is a fire burning, burning low, where bodies speak what words don't know, where Abbi waits and the present lands, and meaning lives in eyes and hands. You didn't lose it, just forgot — the campfire's real, the ghost is not.
