lyrics
It was the summer of Elf Hel — the people built a mighty tower
Just to see it all fall to pieces in its finest hour
Children, they were laughing, time was flying with the wind
With no idea it was passing
Dying as it lived
It was the summer of Elf Hel
An independent film that was not yet on this plane
dug its claws into our minds; it was begging to be made.
It was bursting with ideas, some in conflict with themselves,
and all of them intelligent — but none involving elves.
Are you finished, are you done? We’ve got to make this date
No time to sit around, so hurry up and wait
Put a smile on your face — it’s all becoming unfurled,
This is just a reflection of a glimpse of the real world.
Slaving for a Friday that was drawing ever near,
for showing off a perfect film to represent a perfect year.
Doing more than enough for it to merit ᴜᴘᴘᴇʀ ᴄᴀꜱᴇ,
piecing everything together, it was falling into place.
But we were lying to ourselves that everything was going fine,
as we couldn’t see the end of our superb assembly line,
but we believed in the words of the one on high,
convincing each other that we could fit through a needle’s eye.
You can stay here for as long as you need
You can sleep for days on end or fly with blinding speed
And we all filed in, and the lights were coming down,
and hundreds held their breath, and we were ready for renown,
and we were unaware of a superlatively small amount
of factors unforeseeable we couldn’t take into account.
Cue the title card, accompanied by high-falutin’ sound,
and it hit us all at once that for a year we saw the bounds
of the projector strip away a single glyph on either side,
causing us to watch in horror as our grand old daydream died.
credits
from
Back of the Fridge,
released September 3, 2022
Casey Lenhart — performance
Breese Sherman — writing, performance, production
license
all rights reserved