[Silence]
[Arrangement: Low ambient drone. Slow pulsing bass. Distant wind textures. Sparse piano notes like falling ice.]
[Intro]
How long…
(Do you think it takes?)
How long…
(Before it breaks?)
A frozen memory
(Deep in time)
Older than stories
(Older than rhyme)
[Instrumental Intro: Pulsing Bass, Organ Swell, Muted Guitar Chops, Rising Synth Filter]
[Spoken Vocal over minimal beat]
How long does it take to make the ice?
(Hmmm… before you answer, better think twice)
[Instrumental Break]
[Guitar Solo: sustained notes, slow bending tones like cracking ice]
[Organ Stabs, Driving Bass, Snare March]
[Chorus]
How long does it take to make the ice?
(Before you answer, better think twice)
It takes a long, long, long, long time
(You could call it… humanity’s crime)
How long does it take to hold the cold?
(Stories written in glaciers old)
It takes a world beyond our care
(A patient earth… less of us there)
[Refrain]
6 million years
(Of falling tears)
6 million years
(Through shifting spheres)
6 million years
(Kept in arrears)
6 million years
(And disappearing here)
[Verse 1]
Layer upon layer
(Year upon year)
Pressure turns memory
(Into crystal clear)
Snow becomes silence
(And silence becomes stone)
A record of ages
(No longer our own)
[Instrumental: piano motif with slow organ swell]
[Chorus]
How long does it take to make the ice?
(Before you answer, better think twice)
It takes a long, long, long, long time
(You could call it… humanity’s crime)
What disappears in a moment’s heat
(Took eons to complete)
[Refrain]
6 million years
(Of falling tears)
6 million years
(The record clears)
6 million years
(And the future nears)
6 million years
(Still nobody hears)
[Bridge]
Not everything lost
(Can be remade)
Not every footprint
(Can be unmade)
The clock doesn’t rewind
(It only bends)
And what we erase
(Doesn’t pretend)
[Instrumental: Rising synth, full band swell, then drop to minimal piano]
[Final Chorus]
How long does it take to make the ice?
(Before you answer, better think twice)
It takes a long, long, long, long time
(And never comes back in our lifetime)
How long does it take to understand?
(What slips through our hands)
It takes a world learning how to see
(What used to simply be)
[Outro]
How long…
(Too long to replace)
How long…
(A vanishing place)
How long…
(We’re asking now)
How long…
(We’re answering how)
[Spoken]
How long do you think it takes to make six-million-year-old ice?
(Said with tears and fears:)
The answer, of course, is millions of years.
About the Song
Unfortunately, we have already lost things that cannot be replaced or restored.
One of my favorite questions for people who dismiss the significance of climate change is simple:
How long do you think it takes to make six-million-year-old ice?
The answer, of course, is millions of years.
When ancient glaciers, ice sheets, ecosystems, coral reefs, forests, and species disappear, they do not return on timescales relevant to human civilization. Some losses are effectively permanent from the perspective of any society that will exist over the coming centuries or even millennia.
The reality is that many of the changes now unfolding across the Earth system cannot be reversed within a human lifetime. Yet this does not mean that the future is predetermined or that human actions no longer matter.
In fact, they matter enormously.
From the album “Unwritten“