Lyric

お盆に灯す紙の灯籠

I set the paper lanterns on the water

And watched them carry every name I've held

Across the river to the other shore

This is the oldest grief technology

The act of light as message, as release

And I'm rapping above the shamisen tonight

Because some feelings only come in peace

Not in the loud and the performative space

But in the quiet where the shamisen lives

In the specific frequency of paper on water

In the light that the lantern gives

Before it goes

Let it float, let it float

Everything you carry to the water

Let it float, let it float

The shamisen will guide it to the other

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Floating names across the darkened water

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Me and the shamisen and the ones who've gone before

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Even grief can be this beautiful and tender

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

I release you to the river, I release you to the water

I've been carrying some names I couldn't say out loud

In the everyday pace of the living world

But the shamisen creates a different space

Where the unsayable can be unfurled

And I lay each name into the verse like lanterns

Lit with something between love and letting go

And the gentle drum beneath the shamisen

Is just a heartbeat keeping time below

The surface of the grief, the surface of the water

Where the lanterns move in their unhurried way

And I stand here at the bank and keep on adding

All the verses that I didn't get to say

To the faces in the light before they're carried

To wherever paper lanterns go at last

And the shamisen plays on after they have vanished

Into somewhere between the future and the past

Let it float, let it float

Everything you carry to the water

Let it float, let it float

The shamisen will guide it to the other

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Floating names across the darkened water

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Me and the shamisen and the ones who've gone before

There's a paradox in the releasing

That the lantern has to burn to light the way

And the grieving has to stay alive to send it

So the loss keeps the lantern-lighter in the fray

Of living, of continuing, of building verses

On the foundation of the names that went before

And the shamisen has always understood this

It was built for both the ceremony and the roar

Of life continuing despite the empty spaces

Of music filling what the missing left behind

And tonight the paper lanterns on the water

Are the truest rap I've ever tried to find

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Floating names across the darkened water

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Me and the shamisen and the ones who've gone before

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

Even grief can be this beautiful and tender

Paper lanterns, paper lanterns

I release you to the river, I release you