Film Backlot: Where Fiction Takes Root

Lyrics

Woke up this morning.
Tuesday.
And the bakery on Bell Street was gone.
In its place, a pawn shop from 1983.
Same brick.
Different ghost.

They came before the sun.
I heard the low hum of the generator,
the clank of steel on the cobblestones.
Smelled the coffee and the cold metal.
Yellow cables, thick as snakes,
running from the grip truck,
taped across the sidewalk I walk every day.
You just stood there, didn't you?
Let them dress you up again.

Oh, Castleberry.
One week you're a district in Panem,
the next you're Hawkins, Indiana.
They paint fake rust on your fire escapes for the walkers,
then wash you clean for some Ozark money scheme.
The walls hold the light, but not the story.
But I remember. I remember.

They put theatrical grime on the Hottle Building.
Made it look a century older than it is.
And I watched a hero I know from the screen
lean against that very wall,
bleeding something red and sweet that washed away with the rain.
My window looked right down on it.
A whole world, for a whole afternoon.
Then they packed it all up in a white truck.

Oh, Castleberry.
One week you're a district in Panem,
the next you're Hawkins, Indiana.
They paint fake rust on your fire escapes for the walkers,
then wash you clean for some Ozark money scheme.
The walls hold the light, but not the story.
But I remember. I remember.

And the silence after they leave is different.
It’s not just quiet.
It's empty.
The generator’s ghost still hums in my ear.
I walk down the street and I can almost see the tape marks on the pavement,
the ghost of a New York hot dog stand
right where Elliott Street begins.
It was never there, but it was.

The bakery's back today.
Smells like sugar.
But I look at the wall,
and I see the clean spot where the fake blood was.
I see you.
The real you, and all your other selves.