What Is Value (Paper)

Lyrics

So, here you are.
In my hand.

You're not paper at all, are you?
I read that somewhere.
Seventy-five percent cotton, twenty-five percent linen.
Worn soft like an old shirt collar.
The ink, from a building in Fort Worth.
A precise recipe of green and black.
An engraved portrait of a man I never met.
A web of lines so fine they blur.
Just a piece of cloth.

And these words, printed so formally.
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
It’s a strange poetry.
A declaration. A spell.
Who spoke it first?
Who agreed?
Does the spell weaken if we look too close?
Or does our looking make it stronger?
This faith we pass from hand to hand.

What are you?
Really?
A promise from a stranger?
A memory of a transaction?
The ghost of some gold in a vault that isn't there anymore?
You are nothing.
A scrap of fabric.
And you are everything.
The rent, the bread, the bus ride home.
What is value?

I remember the date they told me.
August fifteenth, nineteen seventy-one.
A man on television cut the last thread.
He just... said it.
And the promise changed.
No more gold. Not really.
Just the full faith and credit.
Just us.
Believing together in the same direction.
On a Sunday night.
Did you feel lighter in everyone's pocket the next morning?
Or exactly the same?

Just cotton and linen.
And a story we all agree to tell.
The rustle of it...
...that's the sound of the story.
Isn't it?