Cool Hand Luke - The City Prevails video free download

Track 7 from Cool Hand Luke's album "The Sleeping House", released 10/14/2008 on Lujo Records.

http://www.lujorecords.com/

About:

"I often use the city as a metaphor for the temporal world. The city is a loud, distracting place with traffic, sirens, bright lights, factories, and people busily shuffling down the sidewalks. A few years ago we were leaving Chicago, and I couldn't help but see the irony in the sight of so many spires shrouded in the smoke from nearby factories. I jotted the first lines of this song down and they lay there forgotten until this song started taking shape.

The city is a looming antagonist in the drama of our lives. It was here before we were born and it will be here after we're gone. The city was built by the hands of men, but it controls the lives of men. It does not love us, but still we crawl to it. We are drawn toward the flashing lights and the glamorous storefronts. It doesn't take long for us to forget where we are from and where we were headed. In time we look like all the other zombies hurrying down the sidewalk toward nothing in particular.

There is more than this world and this city has to offer. There is clean water that will quench our thirst forever. Our hope and our redemption is in the streets crying out. Can you hear it?"

Lyrics:

(Ecclesiastes 1:4)

For all the spires this city raised

You'd think this is a holy place

The shadow of a cross descends

But it's swallowed by the haze

You never sleep do you?

Always pouring smoke into

The atmosphere

What happens here stays with us till the grave

Wisdom cries out in the streets (Proverbs 1:20)

But the sirens are singing us to sleep

They're so loud that I can't think

I hear voices but I just can't tell

And when we're dead, the city prevails

Countless walk the open streets

With shackles chained around their feet

Wisdom says to fly away

But they cannot see their wings

Water, water everywhere

But not a drop that I would dare

Drink and so we think we'll go

Imbibe the filthy air

Wisdom cries out in the streets

But the sirens are singing us to sleep

They're so loud that I can't think

I hear voices but I just can't tell

And when we're dead, the city prevails

Don't be silent, God

Don't be silent

Please, don't be silent (Psalm 83:1)

Or I will fall into the world

I will fall into the world

Don't be silent

Please, God, don't be silent

Don't be silent

Please, God, don't be silent

Or I will fall into the world

Or I will fall into the world