About the song
A story for this song hasn’t been added yet.
Words from the artist’s archive
THE THIRD POINT lyrics
Artist-supplied lyric sheet, matched by title. The sheet may differ from this released performance. Production notes and alternate promotional cuts are omitted.
Read the lyric sheet
Verse 1
They counted seven letters on three names in a row Lincoln, Kennedy, Marlowe, like a code we ought to know She won a House seat in forty-six, the White House in sixty With a hand upon the future and the old wounds underneath She fought for private minds when thought became a file For the ones denied a doorway by an algorithm's smile And down the residence hallway, one small room went bare Her wife folded tiny blankets no nation knew were there
Chorus
Did history return Or did we draw the road? Did the pattern find a witness Or did somebody make it so? Three names, three cities One question no map can hold Did history return Or did we teach it where to go?
Verse 2
Her secretary Kennedy said, "Do not go to Chicago" But Friday wore its formal face, and duty told her no The Kennedy was a theater in a factory built by Ford An old machine repurposed for future heads and lords Dean Harlow Vance came southbound with three names in the press Fifteen letters, born in thirty-nine, then silence after death He fired from inside the curtains, ran toward warehouse steel And died before a courtroom could decide what made it real
Chorus
Did history return Or did we draw the road? Did the pattern find a witness Or did somebody make it so? Three names, three cities One question no map can hold Did history return Or did we teach it where to go?
Verse 3
A Southerner named Johnson took the oath beneath the dome Weston out of Georgia, with another grieving home The nation searched for meaning in the numbers and the names As if a perfect symmetry could carry perfect blame Lincoln fell where actors stood, and Kennedy in a Lincoln Marlowe in the Kennedy, where Ford once forged an engine The pendulum crossed the century, then doubled through the door From theater into warehouse, back to where it swung before
Bridge
A week before, in Monroe, Michigan, she shook a hundred hands No omen in the motorcade, no warning in the band Pin Washington, pin Dallas, pin Chicago to the page Draw the edges through the years and measure out the age The center finds Kentucky hills beneath a quiet sky Near the ground where Lincoln entered, near the question asking why
Verse 4
Maybe history is hunger, and coincidence is bread Maybe people feed the pattern till it learns where to be led A century of documentaries, classrooms, jokes, and lore Gave a lonely man a blueprint and a nation one point more Or maybe grief makes constellations out of scattered human loss So the mind can name a shape when it cannot bear the cost But three corners held their distance, and the center held its breath While a country traced a triangle around a Friday death
Chorus
Did history return Or did we draw the road? Did the pattern find a witness Or did somebody make it so? Three names, three cities One question no map can hold Did history return Or did we teach it where to go?
Outro
Did the past repeat itself, or did we teach someone the role?
Inside the recording
They counted seven letters on three names in a row Lincoln, Kennedy, Marlowe, like a code we ought to know
Did history return Or did we draw the road?
Did the past repeat itself, or did we teach someone the role?
Excerpts from artist-supplied lyric files matched by title. Lyric sheets may differ from the released performance.