Scotsman Sessions # 374 Kevin Mclean
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00:00 Walk in the dark and it's only soil and stone Call out and hear only your own echoing tone
00:18 This inhospitable hole is the furthest thing from a home
00:24 Dusty air that swirls with dust, tunnels strewn with bones This place is old
00:34 But so are we, and all we ever needed was the light to see
00:39 Flickering flame casts a glow that travels back Back to the feet of the pack, the bite
00:44 of the cold The warmth of the gathering, the joy of a
00:48 story told Fire stretches its fingers and black walls
00:54 flood with colour The collected work of generations
00:59 An art installation 17,000 years in the making A painstaking effort in a time so hard to
01:08 survive No reward in mind, just a way to say we were
01:16 alive Or perhaps there was a purpose, a guide to
01:21 the flora and fauna that could hurt us Lessons too painful to trust the words spoken
01:27 A hall of bulls might simply be the symbol of a single heart broken
01:35 Or maybe they're a map, a plan of attack The animals easiest to track, time spent now
01:40 But with full-bellied interest later paid back
01:45 There is no way of knowing for sure, but these are not the images that act as Lascaux's lure
01:52 It is the hands, they are Reaching, grasping, pulling directly from
02:02 the past The red pigment blasted absence of a person's
02:05 pressed palm upon the rock The thought that you could touch the stoneface
02:09 and place yourself in the exact space of someone so unrecognisable
02:14 Someone who died before history had begun Who felt compelled for some memory to be held
02:20 long after they were gone How could that be anything but humbling?
02:25 How could you still your hands from trembling? Would your mind flash to a nursery class full
02:33 of 21st century children Placing painted palms on paper later to be
02:38 displayed not on cave walls but magnet-held to family refrigerators?
02:45 Would you still see unfathomable distance? Or would you finally understand that there
02:53 has only ever been an arm's reach between us?
02:58 [silence]
03:00 [silence]
03:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]