[intro: solo harp, no beat, 15s] [verse 1: near-whisper, cracked consonants] When I can't lift my eyes I know it before I know it — a hand closing on the skull, patient, taking its time. I look right. I look left. I am counting threads, specks, stains, the small dirt of the world. Everything must be immaculate. Of course it is not. [verse 2: sub-bass enters, voice tightens, no percussion] So the belt goes round me and I seep the way a wound seeps, slowly, without permission. The world is painted on the inside of my eyelids and I cannot open them wide enough. [chorus: full voice, strings swell, glitch percussion, loudest point of the song] The sphere is concrete. Hewn. Heavy. Binding. Life is literally stony and the air is hard to swallow. Then it lets go. Then it lets go! [interlude: everything cuts, single held string note] [verse 3: sudden release, brighter timbre, breath audible, sparse] Then it lets go. Sharper. Brighter. Slack. Endorphins entering the brain like weather. A wave that lifts and drops its water all at once. Someone has stopped holding my head. It is loose now. It is cut to fit me. I come back into my own body. Early evening. Warm. Blue. [verse 4: swaying rhythm, low strings drone, voice flattens] But the humming stays. A scraping at the back of the skull, the monotonous fiddle of being alive. I sway. I rock. A day without pain is only ordinary — ordinariness marked by a step, a glance. Past the worsening, the bettering brings no solace. What does it bring but torpor. A dulled mind. A tongue that will not be still. [bridge: spoken word, whispered, no music except a pulse] I hear it striking the roof of my mouth. Sitting, standing, walking — it interrupts everything. I cannot stop it. It is like fate. Then my eyes water. Then my head seems normal. And I go on. I step forward. [outro: voice breaks, strings collapse, harp alone, fade to nothing] Late at night everything slides off me. The cliff gives. The stones go down. Something nudges me toward the drop — and I am inside it, lifted out of a film, lifted out of a film. [chorus] The sphere is concrete. Hewn. Heavy. Binding. Life is literally stony and the air is hard to swallow. Then it lets go. Then it lets go!
