SONG: “The Temples Resurrect These Fallen Trees”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “Thousands of endangered trees preserved for centuries inside Chinese temples,” Nature, 5 June 2025, as used in the post The temple as refuge… for endangered species..
ABSTRACT: I probably shouldn’t admit this, but these abstracts are here in part to keep me honest so … this is one of the fastest songs I’ve written for this project. I was traveling over the weekend, and things had been so hectic beforehand (and there were flight delays and meetings and such during and after) that I hadn’t realized the 23rd was happening until it was already happening. And I said, “No, I’m not giving up.” I had recorded nothing. I was just thinking, “Hey, I should be posting more science news,” and then “Wait, WHAT day is it?”
This song started with a beat and the idea that it would be three chords, two of them suspended (meaning, for me, with lots of open strings ringing). That was the sound. And then… everything sort of fell into place. I played a thing that sounded right while lying on the couch, got that down in short order, added a little 12-string accent, thought about what the bass should be but didn’t record it, trimmed a verse out of existence (it might have been a solo, but the pacing seemed off), then looked at what news most needed to become a song (the wolves and the undersea base-and-amphipods were close runners-up) made some “Ahhs” with an echo and then went to feed my parents’ cat, which meant sitting alone in a house, and so words fell into place pretty nicely.
I was surprised at how Christian the words wound up sounding, since the temples are Chinese, but I didn’t want to attempt to go Taoist or Confucian (I’m sort of just a tourist or at best a book-learner, and lyrics would have to get practitioner-ish in short order). And also… this is sort of about resurrection, or at least being a sole survivor. There is a sense in this story of the Inquisition and the saintly relic – I tried to work in lyrics that spelled out the connection between church and museum, both being places where dead or exhumed parts are displayed, both being devoted to contemplation but with a background of execution, death, appropriation of other lives … all held just out of view. The curate and the curator, you know? But also the main thing is the human tendency to do something awful and then venerate the survivors. In this case, the extermination of whole nations of trees, except those few exemplary specimens we decided were in some way holy.
The simplicity was good here, and it’s brief enough that it shouldn’t feel slow.
The strange feedback at the end was a lucky mistake – it was caused by a echo-tank VST with a knob for “feedback” and a knob for “cut off” that, when you balance them just right, turn vocal “ahhhs” into that sort of Radiohead transmission signal. I think I’ll mess around with that some more — I’ve always liked that sound.
That and a good antiphon…
Anyway, I’m considering this as being on time for June. A song that once was not now is, and this is it.
LYRICS:
88 bpm, E Asus2 Bsus4:
Set down your axes
And feel the shade
As we remember all the others killed todayLift up your voices
Read from your books
The names of those remaining who the axes overlookedAll the saints have relics
All the seed banks have seeds
Some temples resurrect the garden that can no longer beThe temples resurrect (The taxonomy of silence reads extinction as praise)
What might no longer be (The sacred final survivor and the end of days)
The temples resurrect (Eschatology transcriptions in DNA)
these fallen trees.