Production Notes
Drums, percussion rock slides, keyboards, glockenspiel pebbles - R Thomas
Acoustic and electric guitars, midi shimmers, bass, lyrics, vocals - PS Perkins
Mixed and mastered by Mystic Tape Deck
©2026 Mystic Tape Deck
Lyric Sheet
Balanced on top of a tall barren bluff,
Two shadowy faraway specks
Wayward locations along a long ley line
Crumbs of some cryptic cromlech
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Boulder, beholder, most durable soldier
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Time is beholden to thee
One sings the songs of the sunrise
And the other one psalms of the dusk
While down in the valley the empires rise up
And are weathered away into dust
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Boulder, boulder, most durable soldier
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Time is beholden to thee
The wind wears them smooth
And the pebbles roll down
And the rain cuts its grooves
And the cold cracks their crown
And they sing to each other
In a whisper so low
That no one can hear them
So no one will know
There’s no one to mourn their passing
And there’s nowhere that they’ll ever go
Beginnings were born to bear witness
And their end no mere mortal may know
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Boulder, boulder, most durable soldier
Boulder, boulder the silent beholder
Time is beholden to thee
The men make their wars
And they cut themselves down
And the blood runs in rivers
As they die for the crown
But they sing to each other
In so dulcet a tone
That the boulders can hear them
Although still only stone
Addendums
The Singing Stones — The Resonance
The Singing Stones represent the memory of the earth and the hidden harmony beneath all things. They are stones that remember what has been spoken, sung, and suffered upon the ground. When struck, they answer—not with their own voice, but with the voice of something buried.
As a Nazilic Arcana, The Singing Stones symbolize resonance, remembrance, and the discovery that nothing truly disappears. Their song may reveal a forgotten truth, awaken something dormant, or simply remind the listener of a voice they had believed lost.
Upright: Resonance. Memory. Communion. The truth that returns when properly struck.
Reversed: Silence. Forgotten knowledge. A truth that cannot yet be heard.
The question of the Arcana:
What has the earth remembered that you have forgotten?
Marginalia
Annotation 04-02A: The Slow and Complimentary Witness
The stones do not remember; they witness. This distinction is important.
Memory requires interruption.
A thing must cease to experience before it can remember having experienced.
The stones have no such interruption. They remain. They observe the empire, and they observe its ruins. They observe the grass growing through the fallen bricks and crumbling arches.
For this reason the stones are described as witnesses rather than historians.
The historian asks what happened, but the witness does not ask; it simply remains present.
Several later scholars have suggested this is the first error human beings make when attempting to understand the Great Cycle.
We believe the purpose of memory is to preserve the past.
The stones appear to understand it differently.
For them, the purpose of memory may simply be to continue watching.
Annotation 04-02B: Concerning the Division of the Horizon
The eastern stone sees the morning.
The western stone sees the evening.
Neither sees the whole sky.
This is not regarded as a defect.
The stones were never intended to see everything, they were intended to tell one another what they had seen. Nazilic scholars have occasionally referred to this as the Doctrine of Complementary Witness. No individual consciousness possesses a complete account of reality. The mistake is in believing otherwise.
The eastern stone does not correct the western stone.
The western stone does not correct the eastern stone.
They simply continue the conversation.
From this principle arose an obscure Bell teaching:
“A partial truth becomes whole only when another witness is permitted to contradict it.”
The teaching has been omitted from several later editions of the Codex.
The reason for its removal is unknown.
Annotation 04-02C: De Lapidibus Canentibus
The stones sing.
This statement has been challenged repeatedly.
The objection is always the same:
No human ear can hear them,
So, for whom do they cantillate?
But the objection is irrelevant.
The inability to hear a thing
Does not constitute proof of its silence.
Still, the stones sing.
Beneath the threshold of human hearing.
Communication at the pace of erosion.
Slower than we are willing or able to go.
The mountains do the same.
The earth does as well.
The underwater rifts also sing.
Perhaps the universe itself does.
The human has convinced itself of a curious conclusion
Where phenomena beyond the limits of its senses are nullified.
This is not reasonable.
This is vanity.
Enduring this accusation
Longer than humanity has existed,
The stones have yet to answer.
Instead, they continue singing.