Based on the blog post I Have Seen the Tops of Clouds by Quinn Norton.
This song has not been tested by actual singers.
I had to invent two small bits of musical notation. When the voice has a dotted whole note, that means to hold through the next measure with the lyrics there sung by someone else. Possibly by the audience. Mostly the song calls for a single singer -- just not those echoes. Also, the C1.3 chord means just the major third (C and E) with neither A nor G. It's the intersection of A Minor and C Major and is therefore ambiguous as to what it's a part of.
Placing this song in the arc may be tricky. It's a little dark for morning, but the light in it is clearly the light of morning and not the light of the day before.
Also, "To hope is a thing you can choose" may conflict with people's sense of "If we are doomed, I want to believe we are doomed". But hope isn't about belief -- it's about attention. And that is a thing you can choose.
Some nights I awake from my bed in cold terror
with echoes of nightmares just roaming my skin.
All the wrongs, all the dangers I hold off in daytime
return to my thoughts as the night closes in.
It gets so much harder when monsters are true.
I can't quite imagine just what we could do.
A miracle's needed to see us all through.
But what have we got? We've got me; we've got you.
And I...
I have seen the tops of clouds.
I can breathe beneath the sea.
I laugh with friends from across the world.
Where I go a library goes with me.
I see the destruction of earth, sky and ocean.
See ignorant thinking and hate in the heart,
Signs of frailty throughout our civilization
It may be our ticket was punched from the start.
I'd never say ``cover your eyes from bad news.''
But giving up now is a sure way to lose.
So know that to hope is a thing you can choose.
Just dig through our past: there are signs; there are clues.
Like that...
I have seen the tops of clouds.
I can breathe beneath the sea.
I laugh with friends from across the world.
Where I go a library goes with me.
This isn't a thing that our past selves expected.
Lord Kelvin assured us that steel cannot fly.
His mistake was quite subtle and all we need hope for
Is similar errors in proofs we'll all die.
And if we yet meet with the end that we fear,
'Twill still have been good that this once we were here:
For one shining moment life saw itself clear,
And dreamed of how soon to the stars it might steer.
And how...
I have seen the tops of clouds.
I can breathe beneath the sea.
I laugh with friends from across the world.
Where I go a library goes with me.
Yes I have seen the tops of clouds (tops of clouds)
And I can breathe beneath the sea (the sea)
And how I laugh with friends from across the world
Where I go a library goes with me. Goes with me.
Goes with me!
