The Blueprint's First Line: A Vision Takes Form

Lyrics

[Intro]
Good evening, vellum.
Just you and me now.
The city is quiet outside.
Just the smell of cedar, and ink, and possibility.

[Verse 1]
The brief from H. Gordon Jones sits on the edge of the table.
A good man. Wants a home, not just a house.
He speaks of permanence. Of symmetry.
Of a place his children will remember.
All that weight, all that future...
And it rests right here, on your perfect, empty surface.
A world waiting for a single mark to begin.

[Chorus]
Here it comes.
The first line of the blueprint.
The hand is steady, the graphite is sharp.
From this one straightness, a roofline will slope.
From this first commitment, a foundation is poured.
A vision takes form.

[Verse 2]
My T-square is cold against my wrist.
The style guides are open to the page on Palladian windows.
Francis Palmer Smith, they say, has a meticulous vision.
But it's just a hand, and an eye, and a breath held tight.
Translating a feeling into an angle.
Trying to draw the sound of a family's laughter
into the dimensions of a grand hall.
Trying to build a memory before it has happened.

[Chorus]
Here it is.
The first line of the blueprint.
The hand is steady, the graphite is sharp.
From this one straightness, a staircase will rise.
From this first commitment, a hearth is lit.
A vision takes form.

[Bridge]
Does this line follow an older one?
A trail worn into the red Georgia clay before there was a road?
I don't know. I only know my own geometry.
The clean, clear promise of order.
A colonial echo for a new Southern century.
Robert will check the numbers in the morning.
Tonight, it is just this.
This raw, primitive act.
This one dark line against the light.

[Outro]
There.
It's done.
You aren't empty anymore.
Good evening, Twenty-one Cherokee Road.