Lyrics

Before the war
When birds still chirped
And sunshine danced on waves
And the air that we breathed was pathogen free
And citizens flocked to the very streets that now mark their graves
The future seemed a fruited plain on which freedom would grow
But there came a great blaze, Paris was razed
And those who survived were sent to the caves underneath Chaillot

The so-called victors reigned over a retinue of rats
And they spied on our dreams in search of a scene
Primal enough to give them the means to traverse the past
A face I saw when just a boy one Sunday at Orly
Was a key that unlocked the door that had blocked every attempt to rewind the clock
My screen memory did prove that—

Time and space cannot contain
The excess of a mind once flayed
By images you can’t unsee
That underwrite your future history

Unstuck in time
I woke to find the one my dreams betrayed
And together we roamed the gardens and groves that mirror the mazes of catacombs
Where the future lay
But when I returned to Orly, I too late realized
That her face was a shield, a veil that concealed
The moment wherein my murder revealed itself To my eyes
Now I know that—

Time and space cannot contain
The excess of a mind once flayed
By images you can’t unsee
That you rewind obsessively
No matter how deeply repressed
They’ll return like unwelcome guests
That pull the strings behind the scenes
And underwrite your future history

Where the past once was the future shall be
These rabbit holes into temporality
Are remembrances born from the scars they leave
With indelible retroactivity