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Firefly - Firephyte

from SpinTunes 19 Round 3 by Spintunes

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about

Parents sacrifice for their progeny. Firephyte is an anthropomorphic story based on certain plant species' adaptation to forest fires. Told from the perspective of a pyrophytic botanical patriarch, we hear the cycle begin for this lineage that depends on fire to flourish, The cycle: it all burns down, they lay underground, they are activated and awake to a barren landscape. Slowly other species arrive. With this crowd of new and often invasive competition, the next burn is key. Because of their special adaptive resistance and fire tolerance, they eagerly await the next fire to begin the cycle again.

(Firephyte is told against an equally circular structure of a repeating rising G major scale for its entirety, allowing the listener to loop to their burning heart's content.)

lyrics

We started out in a barren space
We've gone through a dry phase
Our candlelight was a desperate plea
A prayer answered with brutality

Four feet deep and cryptic
Embrace our family tree
Patiently optimistic
Tolerance is the only way we'll see

Burn us down
We're underground
Burn us down now

Like our son and our daughter
Like arson and water
With resistance we realize
a once dormant hope to colonize

The grass is always greener
when the judges have all died
Your kids are popular
when they're the only seeds alive

Turn up the Lizard King
Turn down Billy Joel
Lay off the firemen
and let that thunder roll

Let that thunder roll

I've fallen victim to the neighbor's grass
Oh how I prefer that smoke and ash
Now above ground, they're forming a crowd
Just too much life around

Lift us up and burn us down
Lift us up and burn us down

I come from a barren place
Lookin' for another dry phase

credits

from SpinTunes 19 Round 3, released April 18, 2022
Patrick Dwyer - Co-writer, Instruments
Erik Sgariglia - Co-writer, Vocals/Lyrics

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Spintunes Union, South Carolina

Spintunes is a semi-annual songwriting contest. Every other week, the competitors receive a challenge and a week to meet it.

Each album on this site contains the responses to a single challenge.

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