Immutable Antinomy · Track 22 · closer
Ode to the Bootstrap Paradox
A time traveler brings Beethoven's manuscripts to the past, where Beethoven copies them and they become his compositions. Where did the music originate? The effect precedes its cause. The object that creates itself has no author, no origin — only the loop. An ode to the closed circle of cause and effect that creates this album exactly where it began.
Lyrics
[Intro] Little book. Little score. I hold you in my hands. You feel complete. You feel finished. But you have no beginning. [Verse 1] Your paper smells like a rented room in 1941. Like Robert Heinlein's cheap pulp pages read under a bare bulb. A notebook found by Bob Wilson, full of equations he hasn't discovered yet. He just copies them down. He just passes them on. He just becomes the man who found the book. The ink is dry, the math is sound. But the first hand that wrote it is nowhere to be found. [Chorus] So where did you come from? This perfect, closed circle. This effect without a cause. A symphony that wrote itself. A story with no author. You are the child that gives birth to its own mother. [Verse 2] A man steps out of time. He carries a manuscript into the past. He hands it to a young, deaf composer in Vienna. Ludwig van Beethoven just stares at the pages. His Ninth Symphony, fully formed. All he has to do is copy it. All he has to do is publish it. And two hundred years later, a traveler will find the score, and carry it back to him. The music is eternal. The music is an orphan. [Chorus] So where did you come from? This perfect, closed circle. This effect without a cause. A symphony that wrote itself. A story with no author. You are the child that gives birth to its own mother. [Bridge] This album is a little book. This song is a manuscript I found. I'm just copying the notes down for you. So you can hear it, and remember it. And maybe, someday, you'll travel back. And you'll hum this tune to me. And I will write it down. This album ends where it began. [Outro] Who wrote the first note? Who wrote the first note? The first note is the last.