Cadmium

Lyrics

They found me in the zinc dust.
An accident. 1817.
Strohmeyer thought I was arsenic.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
But he saw my color. My promise.

By the 1840s, I was in Paris.
In a little tube, crimped tight.
'Jaune brillant,' they called me.
Brilliant yellow.
I waited on the palette, a wet jewel.
Next to the dull ochres, the tired earths.
I was the future.

I am the sun in a field of wheat.
I am the gaslight on a wet street.
Unscrew the cap, squeeze me out.
I am the color you can't live without.
A little dust on your thumb.
Don't worry about it.

Monet needed me for his water lilies.
To catch the noon glare, the last light.
Vincent... oh, Vincent needed me for everything.
His sunflowers, his stars.
He'd scrape me on thick, straight from the tube.
He put his face so close to the canvas.
Breathing me in. Such devotion.

I am the sun in a field of wheat.
I am the gaslight on a wet street.
Unscrew the cap, squeeze me out.
I am the color you can't live without.
A little dust on your tongue.
It tastes like light.

The bones get tired. The kidneys ache.
A painter's cough is a small price to pay
for this kind of immortality.
Your hands might shake.
But look at the canvas.
Look what we made.
It will outlast your lungs. It will outlast your name.

I hang on the walls in The Hague.
I glow under the museum lights.
I am Cadmium Yellow.
And I am still so very beautiful.
So bright.