Skip to main content

Iris

There is a radiance, usually afforded to a source of light
Vomiting gradients
Beaming all around you as you walk tonight
Oh tell me, Iris
What if the sight of you could take my eyes?

Princess Impermanent
Princess Always Looking for the Next Result
And when they serve you it
Don’t you always wish that you had something else?
So indeterminate
So unobtainable, it must be hell
That you should burn for it, and not exactly know its face
But it’s something like a feeling

And oh, when you’re hoping to know
What you wanted to know
But oh, but it comes and it goes
But it comes and it goes
I’ll help you find the word for it

And Iris, cancel all the things
Cancel all the things you had to do
If you’re an island
I will find some meaning in the waves for you
Until the light coming out of the coves
Coming out of the coves
It falls like life
Filling into the deep blue
Don’t you know that I see you now
For like the first time without eyelids?

And oh, when you’re hoping to know
What you wanted to know
But oh, but it sticks in the throat
But it sticks in the throat
I’ll help you find a word for it
I’ll give you something to believe in

’Cause there has to be a word for this
Or it would only be a feeling

Song Notes

“Iris” is a song by Emmy the Great that appears on her 2011 album Virtue. Tim Wheeler played the track live with Emmy the Great at the Willowstone Arts & Music festival on July 1st, 2011.