The Crack Is All I Can See Now (Hero Worship)

Lyrics

[Intro]
The paper is faded now. Turned that pale yellow of old news. The thumbtack in the top left corner has a halo of rust. It’s been on this wall since June of nineteen ninety-eight. Twenty-four years. I used to know every line on that face.

[Verse 1]
You were tacked up between a map of the world and the window. The first thing I saw in the morning, the last thing at night. Your eyes, printed in cheap four-color ink, seemed to understand something essential. I read your books. I learned your songs. I quoted you to unimpressed friends. The poster was a testament. A certificate of my own good taste. You were the architect of my better self, or so I told myself. The paper was smooth then. Perfect.

[Chorus]
It started as a crease. A small, insignificant fold near the mouth from when I moved house in two-thousand-and-three. I barely noticed it. But now there’s a crack. And the crack is all I can see. It runs from the corner of your eye, down the cheek. The crack is all I can see now.

[Verse 2]
It wasn't age that did it. It was a headline on a glowing screen. A story told by someone else. A transcript leaked in the dead of night. And suddenly the crease wasn't just a crease. It was a fault line. A truth I couldn't un-read. The words you said, the things you did when you thought no one was recording. They live right there, in that tear. The ink is darker along the edge of it.

[Chorus]
It started as a crease. A small, insignificant fold near the mouth from when I moved house in two-thousand-and-three. I barely noticed it. But now there’s a crack. And the crack is all I can see. It runs from the corner of your eye, down the cheek. The crack is all I can see now.

[Bridge]
Thomas Carlyle wrote about it. Eighteen forty-one. 'On Heroes, Hero-Worship.' He said to show him the man you honor, and he'd know what kind of man you are. I suppose he never had a thumbtack and a bedroom wall. It's not about you, not really. It’s about the space you occupied. It's about the shape of the hole you leave behind. We build the statues so tall, just to feel the tremor when they fall.

[Outro]
The poster is still on the wall. I haven't taken it down. It's a different kind of monument now. Not to you. But to the way a shadow can change the shape of a room. To the unforgiving light. All I see… is the crack.