The Lines in My Hands

In the early months of 2020, fresh from heartbreak and raw with the terror of an unknown pandemic and the sudden loss of life-as-we-know-it, I found myself unable to touch the piano, an instrument that had been my heart and soul. Something different was wanting to emerge and be spoken, and from that the first songs of “The Lines in My Hands” unfolded. These are wandering the duality of life and death, the two sides of the same cosmic coin, and the grappling with transience and mortality that came with the pandemic - both the physical deaths, and the death of the lives lived in the before times. These songs were were written in lockdown, recorded primarily in an attic, and bear the unmistakable quiet ephemera of a home.

Death is a dance, death is a lover, death is a parent, death is a child, death is an unnamed beast, death is within, death is in living. And, in the end, I'm just still trying to make sense of it all.

The most stunning musicians in Minneapolis brought these quiet songs to life, allowing them to blossom in the most achingly beautiful ways. These are some of my favorite songs I've ever written, and I feel they will be with me for a long time.

credits

released December 5, 2025

Carlisle Evans Peck - vocals, chorus, guitar, piano, harmonium, bandurria
Willow Waters - double bass, mandolin, electric guitar, horns, chorus
Peter Morrow - acoustic and electric guitars, chorus
Lars Johnson - drums (2, 3, 5, 6, 9), chorus
Zack Baltich - drums (4, 7, 8)
Anna Dolde - saxophone (1, 4, 7, 9)
Kasi Misseldine - vocals (1, 9, 10)
Aubrey Weger - violin (2, 6, 8)
Mikey Marget - cello (2, 6, 8)
Joe Peterson - organ (9)

Recorded at The Nettle Bed, Minneapolis MN, March 2023 - March 2025
Piano and track #10 recorded at Grape Escape, St. Paul MN, March 2024 - January 2025
Organ (track 9) recorded at Calvary Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, MN January 2024

All songs written by Carlisle Evans Peck
Engineered by Carlisle Evans Peck, Peter Morrow, Willow Waters, and Matt Olson
Mixing by Jason McGlone at The Hideaway Studios, Minneapolis, MN
Mastered by Rob Schlette at Anthem Mastering
Cover photo by Madison Gies-Guy

Released on Aura Vortex Records

Thank you:
Purple Haus: Abby-Zak LeGare, Alex Blust
Round River: David Abasz, Lise Abasz, Colby Abasz, Scooby,
The Nettle Bed: Elle Thoni, Alex Griffin, Belle Furman, Elli Gurfein, Bryce Burton, Madison Gies-Guy
Mom, Dad, Emma
Freya, and Penelope

More Music

LYRICS

Blue

Blue surrounding fragile tomb

Blue eyed babe held in my womb

Silken depths the birth shall free

With velvet death together three

Velvet death together three

Trembling breath on naked skin

Warbling sparrows caged within

Sweat on sweat, stand dignified

When we wed in the eventide

When we wed in the eventide

What begins when you are born - 

Foundering, flailing, fallen form?

Time’s a blind dog’s howl at night

And life a stumbling back to sight

life a stumbling back to sight

Danse Macabre

What do you want from me, what did I learn?

Hold yourself tenderly - bridges still burn.

I want to be more than the money I earn.

(I am on fire for you)

Where is it taken from, where is it spent?

Life’s freely given when death pays the rent

Give me a ladder, a rod to be bent

(I made a fire for you)

And as the story goes…

Dance in the flames

Dance in the night

Dance underwater as all your dead 

Gather around you like flies

Gathering circles of eyes

Who do you ought to be, who are you now?

Who’s at the crows’ nest, who’s at the bow?

Aren’t we all penniless to our last vow?

You make the fire for me

And as the story goes…

Death lays no blame

Death without sight,

Death will catch all of us unawares

Combing the beach at low tide

Searching the shadows for lies…

Knowing that one will always become two

Two lovers grinning, two eyes on you

Three petaled flower, the opening of wounds

Four in the ashes, five in the moon

Six made of linen, seven of cork

Eight is an hourglass lost in the war

Nine is beyond the farthest shore

Ten is the wildfire’s deafening roar

And what will I say to her when she arrives?

“I am a stranger here, spare me my life”?

“Pass overhead, yes pass me by”?

“I am too beautiful, too young to die”?

The years and the months and the days all advance

Dying is easy when life is a trance

Take your breath freely, take a chance

Become the fire, become the dance

April 2

Bird call chatter in the big oak tree

But I cannot see its maker

Nor begin to grasp what they mean

With each turn of scene

The trills and the screams

Now you call me three times one right after another

Voice is like pewter

What sense can be made in the crumbling of plaster

With each note that you breathe out

Breathe in to bring pause to the clamor

Death is a hammer

And fear cuts like steel to the quick of the matter

I may not see you again

I’m confused by the robins that sing

The endless stream of water

How it all starts to sound the same

The long ticker-tape

The number of ill and the ones the great wave has erased

Now a word falls to earth like a comet,

A hailstorm on granite,

A siren’s call from the throat of the gannets

Action must follow

Now how do I choose between law and my father

Breath and my mother

I will let go, may the days go no further

Carried by gulls to the kill.

Scared Child 

I am trying to forget, trying to forget all about you.

Heat - won’t you leave something with me when you go

Your mother’s ring, the scent of eglantine?

Well I am a coward, a moth trapped in wax

Don’t get too close

See with soot coming up from my eyes

Wreathe the root wrought of the willow fine

Keeping the mind clear and the body strong

It’s a full time job to always fight you the whole night long

But you are no demon, you’re a wraith cold to the bone

You are no angel, just a friend I have known

Scared child what have you been afraid of all of these years?

Will I only find the answer in my tears?

When will I forget all about you? 

My Beast

The branching of lungs below water, I feel you so cold within

Mouth of a river flood under my skin

Scar follow the valley between what is lent, what is given

With all that I learn from my kin

Felling a pine, a fish on a line

We’ll all answer for our crimes

But are you proud of me yet? 

The heart of a wolf beats no louder than yours, 

In my hunger gnawing the scab off a festering sore

I know what I’d find, gaping mouth of a lion

Swallowing daylight outside my door

Bent in your shame, all crooked and tame

We are one and the same

But are you proud of me yet?

We go out walking along the sea, I stride ahead

Yet you stand a head taller than me

I have never known fear like your whisper so clear

Cold kiss wet under my ear

And I thought you’d go down easy, I thought you’d give up

Soon as I turned to face you

Never a fair fight when the stakes are this high

My name, my freedom, my life

Fists in the snow, a fire from below, 

the burn of a blade against bone

Sight lost in the mud, now the tides bring their flood

My beast, we bleed the same blood

But are you proud of me yet?

Are you proud of me yet - ooo…

The beast speaks for me.

It’s not over til it’s over, til the rising of the sun

Til he’s buried underneath the clover,

til the wretched deed is done

But are you proud of me yet? 

Lover, I’m an Anthem

Careful what you give to me, I’m a room on fire

Bolt the door and lose the key - honey, I’m dark matter

Heat will be the end

Heat will make us whole again

Careful what you say to me, I will suffer no liar

Listless, lonely love is cheap, see to your homely bower

There the flesh will ripen fast beneath the balsam

Bound no more to sickly death, lover I’m an anthem

Future Histories 

Flaxen and ruddy, foxes crowd around my door

Crimson and bloody, quivering on the kitchen floor

What’s left of this year

I thought I’d see my children grow old

But not one babe have I clutched against my breast

As the winds have all changed and the rains come less and less

And every nightfall

That clawing up against the threshold

But when will I yield to the yelp, the scratch,

The teeth that gnaw upon the hatch

The rust, crumbling, failing latch

The flames beyond the hill threatening dawn

This isn’t a conversation I had thought I’d ever meet

Yet stricken I stand, hands upon the bolt

Days are all labor, nights engulfing silver veil

Drinking the vapor, velvet as a vixen’s tail

Woken by silence

Who is the predator without the kill?

Loosed upon the streets of my city until

Some kindness takes them in   

A wound too deep to heal

This isn’t imagination, this is future history

And I’m turning the lock

The Lines in my Hands

Now I see her coming from the lake

Shimmer, carry the stars within a sack of grain

Hidden underneath abyssal plains

All once was sea, can’t you see we are one and the same

Though I am older, older still than the day that she first came to me

Could I have told her a single word on how wisdom don’t come in degrees

Dark as amber, dark as time passes, earth turns and she never sleeps

Though the lines in my hands may hold water, 

I still cannot see what she sees.

Ever she scatters the stars as she passes on through

Children wake early to find your ancestors in the morning dew

Moss bed on moose bone, mourning dove sings alone

Night falling earlier each day

We’re born, we grow, we marvel, we die among the seeds she sows

We’re born, we grow, we marvel, we die and that’s the way it goes

The day will come when my back will break, when my hair becomes nothing but dust

I cannot say how that makes me feel, not in song, nor in poem, nor in trust

The night you see her pass over the still waters, then you will know what I mean

Though the lines in my hands may hold water, I still cannot see what she sees

Though the lines in my hands may hold water, I still cannot say that I’m free

Though the lines in my hands may hold water

Don’t come for me yet, come for me yet, come for me yet

Though the lines in my hands may hold water - 

I’m still not quite ready to leave

My Time

Bruising my temples over you

Snake in my jaw

Burning a hole in the kettle too

It won’t be long

Maybe today I’m a robin’s egg blue

Crushed in your palm

Learn to be gentle, learn to be true

I wish that was all

In the morning I go walking long before sunrise

That’s when I can see my eyes cross horizon lines for something

Careful or you’ll burn the house down with all that boiling

Maybe someday I’ll learn to be better

Or maybe today has a sore leg too

And barely can stand

A knife to the bed, I poisoned the rue

A cage can force a hand

In the evening I wake up just past midnight

That’s when I can sit with the lie that it’s “not my time”

Well it’s about my time

Trying to Make Sense

Give me a light babe, 

come close for a drag

Want you to tell me what’s right babe, 

and we’ll smoke this one down to the filter.

I didn’t come for advice

Or to carry your bags

You know I always think twice, babe

Before bringing myself to the altar

Where do we belong?

In the cabinet with the liquor?

In the back room getting sicker?

With the stars all a-flicker?

I’m feeling far from home

And my eyes it seems are going

Won’t you sing this last one slowly - 

There is beauty in the knowing

Why does the snow want to fall?

Why does the chickadee call?

Why does the weed make its home 

In the cracks in the wall?

Oh I am just alone

And so very small

And trying to make sense of it all

Just trying to make sense of it all.