Cobalt

Lyrics

[Intro]
Before the name, I was a rumor in the dark.
In the Erzgebirge, I was the goblin in the rock.
A whisper of silver, a lie in the vein.

[Verse 1]
The German miners gave me my first name.
Kobold. A curse on their lips.
They’d swing their picks for silver and find only me, the counterfeit, the devil's copper.
I was the dust that clung to their lungs, the bitter taste of poison in the flickering lamplight.
They died blaming a goblin.
They were not entirely wrong.

[Chorus]
I am the blue in the heart of the stone.
I am the sickness that gets in the bone.
I am the window and I am the curse.
The color you would die for, for better or worse.

[Verse 2]
Then a man in Sweden, George Brandt, in 1735, he held me to the light.
He learned my secret, gave me a proper name.
He melted me down in the heart of the flame.
I became smalt. I became the light falling through the high windows of Chartres.
A piece of heaven, held in glass, for anyone who looked up from the cold stone floor.

[Chorus]
I am the blue in the heart of the stone.
I am the sickness that gets in the bone.
I am the window and I am the curse.
The color you would die for, for better or worse.

[Bridge]
The cathedrals are quiet now.
The prayers have grown thin.
But your new gods are hungry, and you must let me in.
You want a charge in your pocket, a ghost in the wire, a silent car moving on electric fire.
So you send new hands digging in the red dust of Kolwezi.
Children's hands, in the Congo.
For me. Always for me.
It’s the same story.
Just a different mountain.

[Outro]
So look at your screen.
Feel the warmth in your palm.
I am the goblin you carry.
Keeping you calm.
The same deep blue.
The same old price.