Song 50: Fordite (The Overlooked)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
In the Ford factory in Michigan
Between 1920 and 1990
They painted the cars on racks
And the overspray
Landed on the rails beneath
Layer after layer after layer
Seventy years of colour
Nobody was trying to keep

And when they pulled the racks out
And cut through the crust
The cross-section
Was the most beautiful thing
The twentieth century
Accidentally made
Every model year visible
Every colour they ever sold
Compressed into a stone
That was never meant to be a stone
That was meant to be waste
That was meant to be scraped off
And discarded
With the other things
The factory didn't intend

[Pre-Chorus]
They call it Fordite
Or Detroit Agate
And the jewellers cut it
And polish it
And set it in silver
And hang it from the necks
Of people who understand
That the most beautiful thing in the building
Was the thing
The building was trying
To throw away

[Chorus]
L'amour du négligé, l'amour du négligé
The love for the thing no one else was looking at
L'amour du négligé, l'amour du négligé
The flea market eye
The collector's heresy
That beauty is not where the spotlight lands
Beauty is what the spotlight
Stepped over
On its way to the obvious
And the obvious
Was fine
But the thing on the floor
Was a gemstone
Wearing a disguise
Made of patience
And seventy years
Of not being seen

[Verse 2]
I fall in love like this
Not with the painting
But with the nail
The painting hung on
Not with the singer
But with the breath
Before the singer sang
The ventral attention network
Directs the eye
Toward what it's been told matters
But the dorsal network
Scans the periphery
For the thing
That hasn't been promoted yet
And I live
In the dorsal
I live in the edge of the frame
Where the background
Is doing something extraordinary
That the foreground
Is too important
To notice

[Pre-Chorus]
And the falling in love
With the overlooked
Is not contrarianism
It's not the hipster's reflex
Of loving the thing
Because nobody else does
It's the genuine recognition
That the layers of paint
On the factory rail
Were always building a cathedral
And the cathedral
Didn't need an architect
Just time
And the willingness
Of colour
To accumulate
Without a plan

[Chorus]
L'amour du négligé, l'amour du négligé
The love for the thing no one else was looking at
L'amour du négligé, l'amour du négligé
The nail the painting hung on
The breath before the singing
The seventy years of overspray
That turned out to be
The most honest portrait
A century ever sat for
Because it wasn't posing
Because it didn't know
Anyone would look
And the not knowing
Is why it's beautiful
And the beautiful
Is why I stopped
At this table
At this flea market
In this rain
And picked up
A rock
That isn't a rock
That is seventy years
Of Tuesdays
That nobody meant to keep

[Bridge]
This is the midpoint
Song fifty of a hundred and one
And I want to tell you
That the album so far
Is Fordite

Fifty songs of overspray
Layers of love
Nobody was trying to archive
The eros landing on the rack
The grief accumulating underneath
The domestic layered over the jealous
Layered over the quiet
Layered over the forbidden

And if you cut through
Right here
At the halfway mark
The cross-section
Is every colour
We've ever tried to name
Compressed into something
That was never meant
To be a gemstone
But is

And you found it
At this table
In this rain
And you picked it up
And turned it over
And the inside
Was a cathedral

And the cathedral
Was made of Tuesdays

[Outro]
L'amour du négligé
Fordite
Seventy years of not being seen
Cut open
And gorgeous
The way anything is gorgeous
When you finally
Look