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songs

The Singer of Songs

A bard older than the page walks out of deep time into the perpetual present. Song finds the body while hands work; print was a brief parenthesis. There is no there, only now — and the singer only exists while the song is sounding.

Summary

The song uses a sparse, acoustic structure with minimal instrumentation, focusing on the interplay of silence and sound. It centers on the idea that the singer is not just a performer but a presence that exists only while the song is being sung. The lyrics shift between past and present, using repetition and pronoun shifts to create a sense of ongoing, evolving reality. The chorus emphasizes the idea that a song is not bound by time or place, but rather a moment of truth (Aletheia) that comes and goes. The bridge introduces a subtle build-up with percussion and turntablism, suggesting a deeper, more intimate connection between the singer and the song. The overall effect is one of a timeless, present moment, where the singer is both old and new, and the song is the only thing that matters.

%%Scrivener note: This song resonates with the Cremondeum's transclusionary principle—the singer exists only in the sounding, much as the document exists in its cross-references.%%

Lyrics

[lone acoustic guitar over faint AM radio static]
(mmm... mmm...)

[Verse 1]
Before the ink, before the page,
the news arrived on a borrowed tune —
a man with a memory full of kings
singing the harvest in, singing the moon.
You could mend a net, you could stir a pot,
the song didn't care where your eyes had gone —
it skipped the thinking and found the body,
lodged in the marrow and carried on.

[Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.

[Verse 2]
They pressed the voice like a flower, flat,
between the boards of the printed word —
five hundred years of lowered eyes,
and the body barely heard.
But I had a wheel that wanted holding,
a coastline calling, a pot on the flame —
the song rode shotgun the whole way west;
it knew me before I came.

[Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.

[Verse 3]
I pulled in past the vacancy sign
where the bay sits thinking out loud,
and found the work already singing —
patient hands in a quiet crowd.
Nobody asked where the music came from;
they asked if it moved, they asked if it stayed.
I just stood where the standing was good
and added the voice I'd made.

[Bridge - percussion softens, pedal steel forward, bouts of turntablism]
We furnish tomorrow with today's chairs,
then wonder who rearranged the room.
I sent my truth down the copper wire —
it came back changed, but the change was the tune.
There's no there to get to, traveller —
just now, and now, and noon.

[Final Chorus]
I am the singer of songs,
old as the fire, young as the air.
The page will keep, but a song just happens —
and there is no there, there.
So sing it with me, wherever you're standing —
now is the only where.

[Outro]
[instruments thin to guitar and static]
If you're hearing this, I'm already fading —
a song is a thing that ends.
Sing it again, I'll be standing beside you:
now, again.
Now, again.

Detail

The song The Singer of Songs is a meditation on the nature of song, identity, and the ephemeral quality of human expression. It begins with a quiet, almost forgotten acoustic guitar and faint AM radio static, suggesting a deep, analog past and a present that is both fragile and persistent. The lyrics open with the simple, repetitive phrase “mmm... mmm...” which establishes a sense of immediacy and the unspoken, the unarticulated, the unexamined. This repetition is not just a rhythmic device; it functions as a kind of echo, a signal that the speaker is not only present but also aware of the world around him, of the song that is being created and the song that is being heard.

The song is about the body as a vessel for sound, not as a passive instrument, but as an active participant in the act of creation. The first verse describes the moment before the page, before the ink, before the news arrives on a borrowed tune. This is a time of absence, of intention, of anticipation. The singer is not yet the singer; he is the one who will sing. The song arrives not through intention, but through the body, through the hands, through the blood that flows in the marrow.

Clerical Audit: From Scilicet to Silaset

The song's core truth—that "the singer only exists while the song is sounding"—is a primary artifact of The Logos. In the spirit of the Archival Apoptotic Principle, we prune the administrative headers and circular summaries to reveal the Silaset: The song is a "breath" in the signal, a productive gap where identity and artifact merge.

The lyrics describe the body as a site of origin, of memory, of identity, of being. The body is not the instrument, but the source. The body is the singer, the one who sings the song. The chorus repeats the title with the same tone, but with a shift in emphasis: “I am the singer of songs, old as the fire, young as the air.” This is a powerful metaphor: the singer is not just old or young, but both. The singer is the one who has lived through the fire of history and the breath of the present.

Cross-references

Cross-references