The Study

Lyrics

Past the hush of The Foyer, where the barometer tells the same lie every morning.
To the left, The Drawing Room breathes out the scent of perfume and polite conversation, a performance I don’t have in me today.
I keep walking, past the open door to The Library, a more honest quiet, all paper and dust.
But not its quiet, either.
My feet know this path. Towards the single oak door at the hall's end. My hand already shaped for the cold brass knob.

And the air changes. A pressure drop. 
This is the room where men become portraits of themselves.
The green-shaded lamp an anchor of light on the desk.
The leather chairs hold the shape of old arguments.
And the blotter… the blotter holds the ink of every ghost, every promise, every name signed with a flourish or a tremor.
A faded map of masculine certainty.

I run a hand over the mahogany. Solid. Real.
Unlike the deals sketched on napkins and burned in the hearth.
Unlike the handshakes forgotten by morning.
This desk is the altar. The decanter and glasses, the sacrament.
The books on the wall are just ballast, rows of uncracked spines holding the room steady against the tide of the world outside.
My father believed that. Or he performed the believing of it. It’s the same thing in the end.

I remember him standing by the window in 1983, looking out, but seeing only the reflection of this room, containing him.
A room inside a room.
And the smell of the old bindings, the dust on the vellum—it has a sound. A low hum, the specific frequency of consequence. Of things written down and sealed.

This is the air. A pressure drop.
This is the room where men become portraits of themselves.
The green-shaded lamp an anchor of light on the desk.
The leather chairs hold the shape of old arguments.
And the blotter… the blotter holds the ink of every ghost, every promise, every name signed with a flourish or a tremor.
A faded map of masculine certainty.

I sit in the chair. I pour a drink.
In the polished surface of the desk, another man's face looks back, younger than I am now.
I add my own ring of condensation to the wood.
Another verse in the ritual.
The door is closed.