Immutable Antinomy · Track 25 · middle
Ode to Apophasis
Apophasis: the rhetorical and philosophical device of defining something by what it is not — 'I won't mention that,' said while mentioning it. This track exists by not being heard. It carries full metadata — instruments, key, BPM, duration, mixing notes, personnel — but no audio file. An ode to absence as definition, to the thing described by its own negation. The silence is the score; the metadata is the music. Paired with the certificate piece in the Hetairix jewelry line: whoever acquires the Apophasis pendant acquires the track that isn't on any streaming service, isn't in any playback queue, and cannot be heard by anyone who hasn't purchased the silence.
Lyrics
I'm not going to sing this song. There are things better left unsaid. This is one of them. I won't mention the shape of the room defined by the air inside it. Or the way your name sounds when I don't say it out loud. Let's not talk about the pause after a question, the space where the answer is supposed to be. I will make no reference to the unplayed strings, the breath held in the lungs of the singer. This isn't about that. And I definitely won't tell you that the thing I'm not saying is the only thing that matters. The figure that hides what it names. The track that isn't here. This silence is the score. I'm not going to bring up Quintilian, in Rome, around 95 CE, teaching boys how to win an argument by pretending to drop it. And I certainly won't draw your attention to a book from 1577, Henry Peacham's Garden of Eloquence, and the note in the margin, crossed out once, from a hand we'll never know. That's not what this is about. And I definitely won't tell you that the thing I'm not saying is the only thing that matters. The figure that hides what it names. The track that isn't here. This silence is the score. I'm not describing the color of the sky at dusk by listing all the colors it isn't. I'm not defining you by the empty space you leave in the bed beside me. This isn't a love song, and it certainly isn't a song of loss. It's just the sound of a promise to not say the important part. So I won't say it. I won't say your name. I won't sing the melody. I'm not even here.