Song 50: Fordite (The Overlooked)

Lyrics

In my hand, you are heavier than you look.
Cool to the touch.
A slice of something that was never meant to be.
Song fifty.
The last one.

You don’t remember the heat, do you?
The smell of enamel, sharp in the Detroit air.
Nineteen sixty-eight.
A thousand hands, none of them knew they were making you.
Just another Tuesday on the line.
Spraying Corvette Blue over primer gray.
Drip by drip.
Year by year.
The overspray catching on the skids.

They called you waste.
Something to be chipped away with a hammer, thrown in a landfill.
Forgotten.
But every layer is a ghost.
Every color is a car that drove away.
You are the city's secret heart, polished bright.
The beauty they threw away.

I can see the strata.
That thin line of burnt orange... a '74 Mustang, maybe.
Followed by a sober, sensible forest green.
Baked hard in the ovens, again and again.
Harder than stone.
A history of taste and time and metal bodies.
Each one rolling out into the sun,
leaving a little of its color behind, with you.
On the floor of a dark room.

They called you waste.
Something to be chipped away with a hammer, thrown in a landfill.
Forgotten.
But every layer is a ghost.
Every color is a car that drove away.
You are the city's secret heart, polished bright.
The beauty they threw away.

And then a different hand picked you up.
Not with a work glove, but with curiosity.
Felt your weight. Saw the hint of color under the grime.
The first cut.
The whine of the blade.
And the world opened up.
A psychedelic river of everything they thought was gone.
Not an agate. An autobiography.

In my hand, you are Fordite.
You are the overlooked.
You are the love for what remains.
For the accidental masterpiece.
You are song fifty.