SONG SYNOPSIS:
A woman's gift for reading minds pulls her out of an ordinary life and into a classified government program, hidden away to turn her sight on the world's secrets. The child who learned to bury what she knew becomes the grown woman who feels unseen eyes watching, becomes the captive who longs for a wedding day that never came. At the end she discovers that the power which stole everything from her has quietly saved the one man she loved — and she chooses to keep the cage that lets her keep watch over him.
SONG INSPIRATION:
Inspired by "Vanishing Lady" by CBS Radio Mystery Theater from February 23, 1978, as heard in the Weird Darkness Retro Radio episode "The Vanishing Bride and the Government's Secret Experiment" (https://weirddarkness.com/wdrr0698/).
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Static Wax takes the stories told on vintage radio broadcasts and reimagines them as era-appropriate songs — the way they might have sounded if they'd been written for the jukebox instead of the airwaves. This track features the voice of Alena Ingram.
"Shadow for the State" by Static Wax (feat. Alena Ingram)
[Verse]
She was nine years old the night she learned to keep it all unsaid,
She asked one honest question and they sent her up to bed.
She'd felt the chill beneath the smiles, the things they wouldn't tell,
And learned the world won't love a girl who knows them all too well.
[Pre-chorus]
So she folded up the knowing,
Learned to bury it down deep,
And she carried every secret,
That was never hers to keep.
[CHORUS]
She's a SHADOW for the STATE, for the MEN on the HILL!
She sees in your mind, she has your SECRETS to SPILL.
They vanished the GIRL,
To make her spy on the WORLD,
A SECRET AGENT against her WILL.
She sees through love and hate, she sees your fate,
A SHADOW for the STATE!
[Verse]
They were watching from the corners, they'd been watching all along,
The men who'd traced the whispers of a girl whose gift ran strong —
Who could hold a stranger's photograph and name the road they'd take,
Who'd feel a lie the instant that a stranger let it break.
[Pre-chorus]
She felt the eyes upon her,
Felt the weight of being known.
And told herself it's nothing,
That a girl imagines on her own.
[CHORUS]
She's a SHADOW for the STATE, for the MEN on the HILL!
She sees in your mind, she has your SECRETS to SPILL.
They vanished the GIRL,
To make her spy on the WORLD,
A SECRET AGENT against her WILL.
She sees through love and hate, she sees your fate,
A SHADOW for the STATE!
[Verse]
Now the room is small and quiet, just a table and a chair,
And the photographs they bring her, and the lamp's unblinking stare.
But her mind has slipped to springtime, to a vow they'd make for life,
To the man who set a wedding for a day that can't arrive.
[Pre-chorus]
Does he wait beside the window?
Does he wonder where she's gone?
Did they tell him that she left him?
Does he keep the porch light on?
[Bridge]
There's no door that she can open, there's no letter she can send,
They never had to lock her up, never had to fence her in.
No road back to the woman that she was before the end.
The cage was never iron bars.
The cage was always skin.
[CHORUS]
She's a SHADOW for the STATE, for the MEN on the HILL!
She sees in your mind, she has your SECRETS to SPILL.
They vanished the GIRL,
To make her spy on the WORLD,
A SECRET AGENT against her WILL.
She sees through love and hate, she sees your fate,
A SHADOW for the STATE!
[Verse]
She hears it in the hallways, how the things she sees come true,
How a word she breathed in passing kept a war from breaking through.
They whisper of a phantom who can stop a strike mid-air,
