AFTER WORK
....is a song about meeting up someone you were once infatuated with in the aftermath of a collapse. One final conversation, one night after work.

It's about approaching that conversation and hoping to hear something kind about the influence you had on their life. Hoping to hear that you were important to them, or for them to share some contrition for the ways they might have hurt you or the disappointment that your separation caused.

After a war, people make peace with big ceremonial events that memorialise the fallen and create a ceremony that recognises the cost of a conflict.

But rather than any big march and big speech and memorial service and church bells, the human tragedies that define our lives are commemorated with slow talk.

Making peace doesn’t come with any great fanfare. Your one time foe re-wrote the past somewhere along the way. They remember things that never happened, or remember things completely differently. There is only a superficial layer left where nobody is responsible for anything. There will never be any healing conversation.

The words you hoped to hear will never come.

After Work
”They make a desert and call it peace” - Calgalus

On the day of our armistice
We’ll go somewhere after work
To honour an old surrender
And I suppose
No one needs to know about
The full extent of the bodycount
But I have a question for you
Do we have to admit it was all true?

After work gets out
On the proviso you’re interested
I think I have found
Something to get us both out of it

i thought there might have been speeches
Where a parade was supposed to be

On the day of our armistice
I found I barely knew the words
To some old song half remembered
and no one really cared that much
How fire spread through the things we loved

How I had a question for you
do you think we've the grit just to pull through?

After work gets out
On the proviso you’re interested
I think I have found
Something to get us both of it

After work gets out
On the proviso