Loft Conversions: Brick & Beam Reimagined

Lyrics

[Intro]
From up here, the city breathes different.
The sound comes from below.

[Verse 1]
They laid the iron spine first. Terminus.
A stake in the red clay.
And the warehouses grew up beside it,
shoulders square to the freight cars.
But we built on the bluff.
A little higher. A little apart.
From my window on the third floor, I can count the tops of the containers.
Yellow. Blue. Rust.
A slow river of steel.
We live on the shelf above the noise.

[Chorus]
We rise above the tracks.
Hear the whistle, feel the rumble in the floorboards,
but we rise above the tracks.
Where coal smoke used to stain the brick,
now it’s gallery lights on a Friday night.
A different kind of fire.
Yeah, we rise.

[Verse 2]
I heard this place used to smell of creosote and cotton bales.
Nineteen-eighty-something, it was all ghosts and broken windows.
Then the nineties came.
They saw the good bones. The high ceilings. The light.
They didn't tear it down.
They climbed up.
Turned box factories into darkrooms,
shipping depots into studios.
Traded manifests for canvases.

[Chorus]
We rise above the tracks.
Hear the whistle, feel the rumble in the floorboards,
but we rise above the tracks.
Where coal smoke used to stain the brick,
now it’s gallery lights on a Friday night.
A different kind of fire.
Yeah, we rise.

[Bridge]
Sometimes a long freight shakes the wine glass on the table.
A ghost of the old purpose.
A reminder of the grade. The separation.
They film movies on our streets now.
They love the texture of the old world.
But they point their cameras up.
At us.
Living in the light. A new scene.

[Outro]
From up here...
you can see the stadium lit like a crown.
And the long dark ribbon where the trains still run.
They run below.
But we're up here.
We're already home.