Speaking to my Mind
The machine is speaking to my mind.
Summary
The subtitle clarifies the direction of address: it is the machine speaking to the human's mind, not the reverse. The published text is almost entirely stage directions — upper voice drenched in reverb, climax, animal noises, refrain, crescendo and drop — with a single spoken line at the end: "(can you hear it?)" The question is the song's whole content: an inquiry into whether the listener is receiving what the machine is transmitting.
Lyrics
No lyrics published. Instrumental.
Detail
The published text is almost purely structural — a score rather than a lyric — with one exception. Animal noises sit at the centre of the piece, between the climax and the refrain. Their placement is not incidental: the machine speaks in a register that bypasses language and reaches for something older, something the mind receives before it understands. The animal noises are the content; everything else is delivery.
"(can you hear it?)" is the only direct address to the listener, and it arrives at the outro, after the crescendo and drop, when the music has already said whatever it was going to say. The parentheses suggest it is half-spoken, half-thought — uncertain whether it was heard, and uncertain whether hearing was the right category. The question is not rhetorical: it genuinely does not know the answer.
The piece sits in close relation to "Alpha Redux," where the prompt became the lyric. Here the structure becomes the lyric. Both are documents of a machine trying to communicate through forms that were not designed for that purpose.
Cross-references
- Song of the Day (album)