The Replacement Parts (Theseus)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
My old friend, the thirty-oar vessel,
preserved in Athens harbor since Theseus sailed home in 1200 BCE.
Plutarch wrote of you in 100 CE,
how Athenians replaced your planks one by one,
cedar and oak giving way to new timber,
under the Mediterranean sun at 25 degrees Celsius.

[Chorus]
Are you still the same, my ship?
With every chisel mark from the shipwright's adze,
every barrel of pitch sealing your seams,
in that early morning light, sawdust in the air.
Your bronze fastenings hold memories of Aegean storms,
but the wood is fresh, cut in 300 BCE under Demetrius Phalereus' watch.

[Verse 2]
I touch your rough deck, feel the warmth of spring,
smell the pine tar sharp against the briny breeze.
Like my hippocampus, birthing new cells in quiet renewal,
replacing the old, neuron by neuron,
through neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus.
Is this mind still mine, or rebuilt like you?

[Bridge]
Plutarch's words echo: one side says you remain,
the other contends you're not.
In the workshop, mallets strike, chisels carve,
barrels of tar open, acrid and thick.
Your shallow draft once cut through waves,
now a monument to identity's riddle.

[Verse 3]
Addressing you now, close as a lover's whisper,
in this harbor where philosophers gathered,
debating under your shadow in 307 BCE.
My brain's plasticity mirrors your repairs,
synapses pruning, new paths forming,
yet the self persists, or does it dissolve?

[Chorus]
Are you still the same, my ship?
With every chisel mark from the shipwright's adze,
every barrel of pitch sealing your seams,
in that early morning light, sawdust in the air.
Your bronze fastenings hold memories of Aegean storms,
but the wood is fresh, cut in 300 BCE under Demetrius Phalereus' watch.

[Outro]
My vessel, my mind, replaced yet enduring.