The stories behind Fifteen Years, Five Hundred Pages

• The Sound of 'Fifteen Years, Five Hundred Pages' — Two takes chase the same relief through different endings — one closes on a guitar-solo climax, the other fades into a hushed acoustic coda.
• Fifteen Years, Five Hundred Pages: The Standard That Finally Caught Up — The song is built around the medical-device design standard that sat untouched for fifteen years, then returned five hundred pages long.

Lyrics

15 years since anyone opened the book

Still the same wrong button

Same worried look

We'll be

2009, the last ink went dry

One long silence,

nobody asked why

People kept pressing what they shouldn't touch

The page stayed shut, didn't say much

15 years, 500 pages

Catching catching up to every one of the stages

Every knob, every screen, every hand that shakes

Map now to the choice the design maker makes

Now the drawings answer the reasons why

The switch, the strap, the way we reply reply

Every version has to prove a person tried it first

Before it leaves the bench to make somebody's day worse

Fifteen years,

five hundred pages Catching up to every one of the stages

Every knob, every screen, every hand that shakes

It takes math now to the choice the design may command

Maybe we were never careless

Maybe the shape of it was thoughtless

Fifteen years to learn the difference

Written down now, no more guessing

Fifteen years, five hundred pages

We weren't the flaw, we were the stages

Every knob, every screen, every hand that shakes

Finally mapped to the choice the design maker makes

Five hundred pages

And we're still awake

you