Studioplex: Where History Frames the Future

Lyrics

Red brick on Auburn Avenue.
I see you.
Listening to the new hum, the electric scooters.
But I know what you remember.


You remember the smell of raw cotton.
The air thick with it, 1897.
Jacob Elsas's German dream rising by the railroad tracks.
A city of looms, a thousand clattering hearts
beating out the rhythm of the new century.
Children's hands, quick and small, tying broken threads.
You remember the whistle's scream at dawn.


And these same walls that held the dust and the din,
now they hold the light.
From the clatter of the shuttle to the director's quiet call for "action."
From cotton bags stacked to the sky
to pixels dancing on a screen.
You just frame the picture.
You let the future in.


You remember 1914.
The spring air tasting of coal smoke and anger.
Voices rising from the factory floor,
Black and white, for a moment, one voice.
Shouting for a dime more, for a minute's peace.
You felt the vibration of their marching feet,
the silence when the strike was broken.
You held that memory in your mortar.


And these same walls that held the shouts and the strain,
now they hold the light.
From the clatter of the shuttle to the director's quiet call for "action."
From cotton bags stacked to the sky
to pixels dancing on a screen.
You just frame the picture.
You let the future in.


Now the whistle is a Nespresso machine's hiss.
The looms are silent, replaced by the click of a keyboard.
A writer stares into a laptop's glow
through your tall, multi-paned windows.
Building a world on a blank page.
Outside, a grip tapes down a cable on the weathered concrete.
A new kind of weaving. A different kind of thread.


Oh, Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill.
Studioplex.
What do you dream about now?

When the last light is switched off for the night.
Just the BeltLine whispering by.
Just the stories in your brick.