[Cast: V1 Professor Pondscum, V2 swamp students] [V1: male, South Carolina drawl, harsh smoker rasp, manic spoken singing] [V2: creature ensemble, short replies and chants] [Intro: insects, bubbling water, muted bass] [V1: spoken] Puppet Academy! Keep your feet on your lily pad. If the lectern moves, don't make it mad. What happens when this old tree drops? [V2: small frog, spoken] It dies? [Silence] [V1: spoken] BOY... THAT LOG IS A WHOLE DAMN RESTAURANT! [Drop: fuzz bass, swamp funk drums] [V1] Beetles at the doorway! Worms behind the bar! Fungus brought a thousand forks and parked 'em in my car! Crocodile, take attendance! Let the lunch bell ring! Today's disgusting lesson is a beautiful thing! Organic matter, class! Rocks ain't on the menu! [Verse 1: crooked funk, sly drawl] That oak quit growing, but the crowd moved in, A city full of mouths beneath its busted skin. Some bugs chew tunnels, make the pieces small, More room for the microbes at the dinner hall. Fungi send their enzymes out to break wood down, Then soak up smaller morsels in this rotten town. Bacteria get busy with their tiny chemistry, Turning yesterday's forest into somebody's groceries! [Prechorus: rising organ] [V1] Who breaks the leftovers? [V2] Fungi! Bacteria! [V1] Who shreds the portions? [V2] Critters in the cafeteria! [V1] Not every fungus eats the dead, but these ones do! Now shake that decomposing thing I handed you! [Chorus: sludge guitars, huge funk pocket] [V1] EVERYTHING ROTS! And that's a beautiful thing! Underneath the fallen, hear the living sing! You call it decay! I call it dinner! Little bitty jaws make the whole world bigger! Carbon keeps moving, nutrients return, Roots take a share and the green leaves turn! [V2] Rot is life! Rot is life! [V1] ROT IS LIFE, BABY! Pass the fork and knife! [Verse 2: fast talk singing, clipped stops] Nitrogen in proteins, phosphorus in cells, Dinner's locked in compounds, not in magic spells. Microbes free some nutrients, hold some while they grow; Other mouths recycle them, and round the food webs go. Roots take up dissolved nutrients, pull 'em from the ground, Build another leaf where the old tree tumbled down. Leaves take carbon dioxide from the air above, Sunlight pays the kitchen with that hot celestial love! [V1: spoken, bass stops] Matter cycles. Energy flows! It comes in, moves through, and heat goes! Quit drawing sunlight in a circle, Clyde! That arrow's got the whole damn planet fried! [Chorus: full band, student responses] [V1] EVERYTHING ROTS! And that's a beautiful thing! Underneath the fallen, hear the living sing! You call it decay! I call it dinner! Little bitty jaws make the whole world bigger! Carbon keeps moving, nutrients return, Roots take a share and the green leaves turn! [V2] Rot is life! Rot is life! [V1] ROT IS LIFE, BABY! Pass the fork and knife! [Breakdown: half time doom blues, bubbling sub] [V1] Now watch this... down where the oxygen's gone, Different microbes keep the breakdown crawling on. Some make methane in that airless stew; That bubble ain't a ghost come back for you! Waterlogged and starved of air, decay can creep; In some bogs, peat builds where the old plants sleep. Not all dead stuff vanishes fast or the same; Cold, dry, sour, short of air can slow the game. [V2: spoken] Professor! Your beard is growing teeth! [V1: panicked] THAT'S THE FACULTY FROM UNDERNEATH! Don't eat that mushroom! Looking won't tell! Some will send your little liver straight to hell! [Instrumental break: wah guitar, worm percussion, dub echoes] [Bridge: warm organ, quiet gravel] [V1] I used to think the fallen were the ones we leave behind, Till I found a seedling where an old oak lost its spine. That tree won't wake tomorrow, won't remember being tall, But its matter feeds a forest. It ain't wasted after all. A hollow makes a shelter. A beetle finds a bed. There's a thousand lives depending on the thing we called dead. You don't have to find it pretty. Just look a little more. There's a whole world making futures on the forest floor. [Build: accelerating delivery, bass rising] [V1] The mushroom is a fruiting body, spores go on the breeze! The feeding threads are mycelium, weaving through debris! Beetles on the blackboard! There's a slug inside the light! MY SANDWICH HAS A TENURE TRACK! It starts on Friday night! [Final chorus: massive sludge funk, choir] [V1] EVERYTHING ROTS! And that's a beautiful thing! Underneath the fallen, hear the living sing! You call it decay! I call it dinner! Little bitty jaws make the whole world bigger! Carbon keeps moving, nutrients return, Roots take a share and the green leaves turn! [V2] Rot is life! Rot is life! [V1] ROT IS LIFE, BABY! Pass the fork and knife! [Outro: bass alone] [V2: spoken] Professor... are you actually alive? [Silence] [V1: spoken] Well... define alive. [V2: low frog chant] Rot... rot... rot... [V1: spoken] Class dismissed. The desk is eating Clyde. [Final hit] [End]
