BUILDING BLUEPRINT
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Lyrical Analysis of...
The Cartographers Confession
- ///verse 1
- i mapped the unmappable terrain of my own meridians
- drew longitude through grief and latitude through discipline
- the coordinates of failure intersect at twenty three degrees
- due south of where I started, north of where I meant to be
- but the cartographer doesn' grieve the wrong turns on the parchment
- every deviation is a contour line, a garment
- sewn into the topographic body, all the peaks
- all the sudden drop off valleys and the weeks
- of plateau where nothing rose and nothing fell
- just the flat sustained continuation I know that elevation well
- the nothing happening stretch that separates the climbs
- thats where most people turn around, I mapped those times
- not as failure, as topography, the low ground has its data
- tells you what the water does, tells you what comes later
- when the gradient resumes I mapped all of it, meridian by meridian
- the cartographers confession, I got lost and made it discipline
- ///hook
- i keep the map revised, keep the legend legible
- every symbol cross referenced, every border revisable
- this is not terra incognita, this is terra that I earned
- every elevation line a lesson that I burned
- into the parchment with the pressure of the real
- the cartographers confession is the map was always feel
- as much as measurement, the instrument and the intuition
- the cartographers confession, I been making my position
- up as I go
- but the going makes the map
- and the map is how I know
- where I am when I look back
- ///verse 2
- i charted every river by the sound it made at dusk
- every canyon by the particular color of its rust
- theres a mountain range I named for someone who wont hear the name
- but the altitude was real and so was everything the same
- about the way it felt to stand at the summit and realize
- the summit is just another place that has a different size
- of view, not a destination, a vantage, a perspective shift
- the mountain doesnt reward you with arrival, its the gift
- of temporarily above, of briefly having elevation
- the cartographer knows better than to make that his narration
- of success, the story isnt getting to the top
- the story is the mapping while you walk, while you drop
- into the valley on the other side, while you navigate the pass
- while you read the lichens on the stone for what they say about the past
- climate of this specific slope guess thats the cartographers obsession
- not the peak but the particularity, the precision
- i drew my childhood like a contested border zone
- unclear at the edges, sovereign in the middle and alone
- in a way that maps dont have a symbol for
- the feeling of a territory that doesnt know what its a territory for
- yet I flagged those places with a special notation
- a symbol I invented, half question mark, half foundation
- stone the places that were simultaneously
- unknown and load bearing, simultaneously
- the thing I built on and the thing I hadnt solved
- some of the map evolved
- while I was reading it, the ground moved underneath the pen
- and I remapped it and it moved and I remapped again
- and the final version of the map is still in progress
- and thats not failure thats the only honest cartographic process
- ///bridge
- dont hand me your GPS of who Im supposed to be
- dont triangulate my purpose by your signal tower reading
- the map im drawing bleeds past every edge of every page
- i need more parchment, need more coastline, need more age
What is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is like a report card for your lyrics. It contains a lyrical breakdown and analysis of all the words, syllables, and rhymes in your song.
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