Mouthstuck (Mobius Trip and Hadron Kaleido)

Commissioned by Aleph Null

[It is recommended that as you read this article, you listen to The Night Begins to Shine by BER at the speed it takes to finish that song. If you do not finish the article by the end of the song, please start again. If you finish the article before the song is done, restart the song and start again.]

Of powers we cannot perceive! The stars aren't aligned or the gods are malign. Blame is better to give than receive, you can choose a ready guide (in some celestial voice). If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that's clear: I will choose free will! There are those who think that they've been dealt a losing hand. The cards were stacked against them, they weren't born in Lotus-Land. All preordained, a prisoner in chains, a victim of venomous fate kicked in the face. You can't pray for a place in heaven's unearthly estate!

No singing in the acid rain. Red alert! Red alert! It's so hard to stay together, passing through revolving doors. We need someone to talk to and someone to sweep the floors. Incomplete! Incomplete! The world weighs on my shoulders, but what am I to do? You sometimes drive me crazy, but I worry about you. I know it makes no difference to what you're going through, but I see the tip of the iceberg, and I worry about you.

Learning to match the beat of the old-world man, learning to catch the heat of the third-world man, he's got to make his own mistakes and learn to mend the mess he makes. He's old enough to know what's right and young enough not to choose it, He's noble enough to win the world, but weak enough to lose it. He's a new-world man!

Yet now, we feel that we are paper, choking on you nightly. They tell me "Son, we want you, be elusive, but don't walk far." For we're breaking in the new boys, deceive your next of kin! For you're dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy. You're just an ally of the leecher, Locator for the virgin King, but I love you in your fuck-me pumps and your nimble dress that trails! Oh, dress yourself, my urchin one, for I hear them on the rails. Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said: “We are the dead!”

See how it sings like a sad heart and joyously screams out its pain! Sounds that build high like a mountain or notes that fall gently, like rain. I can’t wait to share this new wonder, the people will all see its light! Let them all make their own music! The Priests praise my name on this night. In the sudden silence as I finished playing, I looked up to a circle of grim, expressionless faces. Father Brown rose to his feet, and his somnolent voice echoed throughout the silent Temple Hall. Instead of the grateful joy that I expected, they were words of quiet rejection! Instead of praise, sullen dismissal. I watched in shock and horror as Father Brown ground my precious instrument to splinters beneath his feet. I know it's most unusual to come before you so, but I've found an ancient miracle I thought that you should know. Listen to my music, and hear what it can do. There's something here as strong as life! I know that it will reach you!

Heaven is cold without any soul. It's hard to believe I was so in love with you. Don't say your prayers, don't build your hopes. Just walk away. Don't phone me up, don't call around, don't waste your time. You were so in awe of me, you were so divine, you would do just anything to still be mine. Heaven is cold without any soul. It's hard to believe I was so in love with you. All the things you said to me, I was so obsessed. You were always talking, talking. God, I did my best!

Ok, it’s like this. There’s a tribe living by a river. And in the river, there are crocodiles. The tribe has one particular piece of wisdom passed down through the generations. It goes like this: if you happen to meet a crocodile, don’t stick your head in its mouth. Every now and then, and who knows the reason, people ignore this advice. Which is sad because they die, but very stupid because they were warned. They had a choice. The moral of the story is this: you can’t afford to be stupid. There are crocodiles.

Oohhhhh! He's a frozen treat with an all new taste! 'cause he came to this planet from outer space! A refugee of an interstellar war! But now he's at your local grocery store! Cookie Cat! He's a pet for your tummy! Cookie Cat! He's super duper yummy! Cookie Cat! He left his family behind! Cookie Caaaaat!

To seek the sacred river, Alph, to walk the caves of ice, to break my fast on honey dew, and drink the milk of paradise, I had heard the whispered tales of immortality. The deepest mystery from an ancient book, I took a clue, I scaled the frozen mountain tops of eastern lands unknown. Time and man alone, searching for the lost, Xanadu.

I hate a moral coward, one who lacks a manly spark. I just detest a man afraid to go home in the dark. I always spend my evenings where there's women, wine, and song. But like a man, I always bring my little wife along! I'm a member of the Midnight Crew! I'm a night owl, and a wise bird too. Home with the milk in the morning, singing the same old song! Rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun; early to bed, and you'll miss all the fun! Bring your wife and trouble, it will never trouble you! Make her a member of the Midnight Crew!

Now that time, it came calling. An angel has fallen, and nothing can be how it's been. And when love seemed so heartless, when light turned to darkness, now only her star can be seen. What have we done? You could talk without speaking, cry without weeping, your secrets will never be told. Leave your bonds left unbroken, words left unspoken, and dreams that can never unfold. What have we done? So there's no one to cry for, to lay down and die for. Now only the scars can be seen: What have we done?

Go screaming through the valley as another joins the chase! Drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man, laughing out loud with fear and hope. I've got a desperate plan! At the one-lane bridge, I leave the giants stranded at the riverside, race back to the farm to dream with my uncle at the fireside.

Soon it will be the phase of the moon when people tune in. Every girl know about the punctual blues, but who's to know the power behind our moves? A day of coincidence with the radio and a word that won't go away. We know what they're all going to say. "G" arrives, funny, had a feeling he was on his way. We raise our hats to the strange phenomena. Soul birds of a feather flock together. We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us. Sure 'nuff, he has the answer, he has the answer, He has the answer: Na na, na na. On mani padme. On mani padme. On mani padme hum. You pick up a paper, you read a name. You go out, it turns up again and again. You bump into a friend you haven't seen for a long time. Then into another you only thought about last night.

These are the little children, the future in our hands. When all God's children on this Earth inherit all our plans, these are the lies they tell us. The future's good as sold. In all the things we do and know, we really must be told.

And ever since then, we've been based on the dollar value on a freely floating exchange rate! [SCREAMS] The money ain't tied to a specific item of value. And it's all make believe numbers and market manipulations. But now, me and my gold will be safe from financial ruin. How do you like that, President Nixon? Huh?! Back on the standard, baby!

Red frame, white light. Telephone calls. Black and white. Red frame, white light. You have a yellow book.

So many things I think about when I look far away. Things I know, things I wonder, Things I'd like to say. The more we think we know about, the greater the unknown. We suspend our disbelief and we are not alone. Mystic rhythms capture my thoughts and carry them away. Mysteries of night escape the light of day. Mystic rhythms, under northern lights, primitive things stir the hearts of everyone.  We sometimes catch a window, a glimpse of what's beyond. Was it just imagination stringing us along? More things than are dreamed about, unseen and unexplained. We suspend our disbelief and we are entertained! Mystic rhythms capture my thoughts and carry them away. Nature seems to spin a supernatural way. Mystic rhythms, under city lights or a canopy of stars; we feel the powers and we wonder what they are. We feel the push and pull of restless rhythms from afar.

But we were the evil empire all along, who fought the other evil empires not because we were the Good Guys, but because we wanted to be a bigger evil empire than all the others. We didn’t win the war between good and evil because there was never any such war; we won the war to be the biggest bully on the block. The Nazis learned by watching us, their racial policies just a Germanized Jim Crow, the Holocaust American-pioneered techniques of mass production applied to the American-pioneered techniques of concentration camp and genocide. Lebensraum is just German for “Manifest Destiny,” which is why we fought them–one imperialist expansion smacking into another. (Well, not really. The Germans and Japanese both learned from us, but it was the expanding Japanese empire that smacked into ours first. But they could ally with Germany because they had the Soviet empire in between them, and that’s how we ended up at war with Germany. The point: it’s all empires fighting empires; if you want scrappy bands of heroic rebels, look to the places already conquered.)

Regarding this album… Imagine if members of Rush and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark decided to work with Greg Cipes of Teen Titans, Teen Titans GO!, and Fast & Furious fame on a concept album about how the secrets of the universe can only be discovered through falling in love while having a dispute online over what Homestuck is about, and how such love is fleeting, but ultimately worthwhile. That’s this album. But at the same time, that feels a bit mean. There’s a snideness to describing the lyrical nature of the song as just “Homestuck Discourse Romance.” In truth, I didn’t even notice it was a Homestuck thing when I first listened to it. It sounded very modern and techno, but also had what sounded like a harpsichord. I don’t really listen to lyrics as I listen to a song. I mainly focus on the tune it implies and how the song makes me feel. There’s an air of melancholy to the singer that conflicts with the upbeat instrumentals. The harmonies collide like an electric ocean on the psychic landscape that is this brave new world. Analyzing it in prose doesn’t do it justice, and I don’t have the right technical and editing skills to do it in the soundscape it deserves. In short, I liked it quite a bit and would recommend it to non-Homestuck fans (Are Homestuck fans called Stuckers? Trolls? Peak Nerdom?).

Everyday I'm on my knees to pray. Since I kissed you once, and I held you once, things have never been the same.

And on that night, and in that way, you wove your magic slowly. The broken boy is healed again. I fall into you wholly. Unforgiving and now all alone! Where's the beauty that you bled? When you've buried all the pain that you have known, I will carry you to bed. Where's the perfect that you used to know? Where's the rainbow in your head? When you've cast all your enemies to stone, who will carry you to bed?

Keep the nightlight on inside the birdhouse in your soul. Not to put too fine a point on it, say I'm the only bee in your bonnet, make a little birdhouse in your soul. Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you? Make a little birdhouse in your soul! Not to put too fine a point on it, say I'm the only bee in your bonnet. Make a little birdhouse in your soul.

To be honest, I’m not much of a music critic. Oh sure, I’ve dabbled here and there. But most of that was looking at the lyrics or looking at things that aren’t actually the songs being performed. To be a music critic, a true music critic, one must understand the implications of each cord, each melody, each verse in the cosmic whole of the song. Without this understanding, you can miss the forest for the tower through the trees. But then, I suppose that would be fitting from what I’ve gathered about Homestuck. The small things get lost to the monumental scale of it all. History is like that too. The meaning of things is discarded for the things themselves. That’s why we’re doomed to repeat it, I suppose. We never learn our lesson. Wasn’t World War I supposed to be the War to end all wars? They aren’t supposed to get sequels, is what I’m saying.

History [Terminology] In a War where all the major powers are time-active, it’s vital to understand the difference between “history” and “time”. History has (or is) a structure, but has no tangible existence: it’s a method of perceivingtime, of recording it, of remembering it and attempting to predict it. When groups like Faction Paradox talk about ‘changing history’, or the Great Houses talk about ‘defending history’, they’re talking about a process that’s as much psychological as material.

Each of us, a cell of awareness, imperfect and incomplete genetic blends with uncertain ends on a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.

My friend Jon always said it was nicer here than under the atmospheric domes of the Outer Planets. We have had peace since 2062, when the surviving planets were banded together under The Red Star of the Solar Federation. The less fortunate gave us a few new moons. I believed what I was told. I thought it was a good life, I thought I was happy. Then I found something that changed it all...

Our one source of energy, the ultimate discovery: Electric-- blue for me, never more to be free: electricity, nuclear, and HEP, carbon fuels from the sea: wasted electricity, our one source of energy: electricity, all we need to live today, a gift for man to throw away; the chance to change has nearly gone, the alternative is only one, the final source of energy: Solar Electricity! Electricity! Electricity! Electricity! Electricity! Electricity!

Let those old familiar feelin's start to show. Sing my favorite phrase from those good old days. Let those tears and sweet memories flow! It amazes me to hear it--how it's beauty never ends. Now the music made us friends, I'm asking you: so play it one more time, that symphony in rhyme. Let those old familiar feelin's start to show! Sing my favorite phrase from those good old days! Let those tears and sweet memories flow!!!

Death, I suppose, is a way out. They say it’s the easy way out, but that’s because they’re jerks who think it’s easy to dive into the great unknown. As if throwing away everything you’ve ever known, both the good and the bad, is easy. As if they wouldn’t turn on you if you dared tried to kill the ones hurting you even as they advocate for it. But death doesn’t have to mean suicide. In Tarot, for example, the Death card represents a great change in one’s life. Throwing away everything you once were could simply mean running away or embracing an aspect of yourself that you thought was best to repress. Death isn’t always good, obviously. But it’s an understandable option. At the same time though, it’s not the only one…

[END OF ARTICLE]

Sampled Works:

All Star by Smash Mouth
All You Fascists by Billy Bragg

Beata Virgo Viscera by Scout Tafoya

Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants
The Book of the War by Lawrence Miles, Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel O’Mahony, Ian McIntire, Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Phil Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale, Jonathan Dennis, and Mark Clapham

Cookie Cat by Jeff Liu

Crisis on N Earths: Dark City by Jen A. Blue

The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Distant Early Warning by Rush

Electricity by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Everyday by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra

Free Will by Rush

Genetic Engineering by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Ghost Star by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

The Gold Standard by Steve Borst

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I’m a Member of the Midnight Crew by Eddie Morton

I'm Going Slightly Mad by Queen

Mystic Rhythms by Rush

New World Man by Rush

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

On a Bicycle Built for Two by Nat King Cole

Red Barchetta by Rush

Red Frame/White Light by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Sad Song by Paul Williams

So In Love by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Strange Phenomena by Kate Bush

There are Crocodiles by Steven Moffat

2112 by Rush

We Are the Dead by David Bowie

What Have We Done by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

Worldburners Unite by Seeming

Xanadu by Rush