Many Floods
Nothing lost, only forgotten.
- Format
- Single
- Genre
- roots reggae · dub · reggae pop
- Date
Lyrics
You ever stand somewhere for the first time
and feel like you've been there before?
Ever start to build something new
and you already know the way?
Child, that ain't a trick of the mind,
that's the river coming round.
There were many floods, many floods,
and we only remember one.
Nothing lost, only forgotten,
nothing new under the sun.
I've been here, you've been here,
it all comes back around.
When I was young I built a wall
to hold the river back.
I swore it was the first of all.
Then one dry year the river fell
and showed me the wall beneath mine
with my own mark on it.
I laughed until I cried,
then I picked up another stone
and I kept on building.
There were many floods, many floods,
and we only remember one.
Nothing lost, only forgotten,
nothing new under the sun.
I've been here, you've been here,
it all comes back around.
So if it's all been done before,
child, what are you building for?
Is it the stone that's yours to lay,
or something to fill the day?
Everything we're building
was here all along.
There were many floods, many floods,
and we only remember one.
Nothing lost, only forgotten,
nothing new under the sun.
I've been here, you've been here,
it all comes back around.
Lay the stone that's yours to lay,
many floods, many floods,
it all comes back around.
The Story
I have a gut sense that when I build something, I’m building it again, and I can feel it before I can explain it.
Two old texts I’ve read say the same thing. Ecclesiastes says there is “no new thing under the sun,” and that whatever we call new was already here long before us. In Plato’s Timaeus, an Egyptian priest tells Solon the Greeks are like children. They remember a single flood, when there were many before it.
So does what I do matter, or does it only keep me busy?
Knowing nothing is new doesn’t stop me. It gives me a choice. I can see the work I’d do without thinking, and I know when I’m only keeping busy. I choose what to build, here and now, and building it is how I remember.
Credits
- Written, produced
- T.J. Kelley
- Label
- Thin Veil Records