We started in the suburbs of smaller cities
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and as we followed the nomadic call
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Our nobler instincts led us further from
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Society's centre, westward, to a cabin hoisted
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Aloft on faulty foundations far above the Napa Valley
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Where the rain soaked earth shifted beneath us and trees caught
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Like kindling smoke clouds ripening
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A vintner's sun
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But part of us refused to follow
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Material distractions beckoned, rallied
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Snagged we'd return to the cities on day trips and long weekends
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Self-arversion, anonymity found only in
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The midst of bricks and mortar the
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Hustle of strangers
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We were worldly people after all
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But the haze of the rural, the agents of pollination
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Clung to us, sparked like hayseed halos in the western sunlight
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No one let on they'd noticed
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But we saw, we knew
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I watched my parents as they stood in a crowded Euston station
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Up fresh from the country, suitcases at their sides
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Waiting on my arrival, illuminated
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In an otherwise sea of grey
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Not of this world
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We were tempted back repeatedly
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Until the lure of the cosmopolitan
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Lay beyond reach
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We moved east, into the forests and the mountains
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Where life's desires tore us apart
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How cruel to find oneself alone at that altitude
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At what point did the fear of numbers set in
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And the recognition of internal isolation place us outside of belonging?
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But then wasn't that always the case, weren't we simply
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Allowed to forget?
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On Temple Mountain I threw down a rope that others might follow
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No one came
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Before and Afterlife (Special Edition Cartography Concert)
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David Sylvian |