Tulip Crash (February)

Lyrics

The sun's up.
Head's pounding.
Room smells like stale beer and yesterday's promises.
February. Damn.

Last night, we were kings down at The Golden Horn.
Packed to the rafters.
Signing paper in the pipe smoke.
Wind trade, they called it. Selling beautiful air.
A dream of red and white stripes.
Semper Augustus.
We traded a house on the canal for a root we'd never even seen.
Felt like we couldn't lose.
Felt like the sun would never come up.

But it's the morning after the mania.
February, sixteen thirty-seven.
My pockets are full of worthless paper, my mouth tastes like regret.
The party's over. The wine's all gone.
Just the cold Dutch dawn, and everyone looking for someone to blame.
Yeah, the morning after the mania.

It happened fast.
February fifth. That auction in Haarlem.
The auctioneer called a price, and all he got back was dead silence.
Just a cough from the back of the room.
The fever broke all at once.
Suddenly every note in your hand was a lie.
Every promise, a joke you fell for.
Saw a man just staring at a contract in his hands.
Like if he looked hard enough, the ink would turn back into gold.

It's the morning after the mania.
February, sixteen thirty-seven.
My pockets are full of worthless paper, my mouth tastes like regret.
The party's over. The wine's all gone.
Just the cold Dutch dawn, and everyone looking for someone to blame.
Yeah, the morning after the mania.

Some professor in a book will say it wasn't really 'mania.'
Just a... market correction.
He wasn't there.
He didn't see Adriaen Pauw's face when the silence hit.
Didn't hear Anna Schulting praying.
Go to bed rich... wake up a poor man.
They got that part right.

The morning after.
Yeah... the morning after.
Just scraps of paper on a cobblestone street.
Sixteen thirty-seven.
Never forget the hangover.