Phrenology

Lyrics

The organ of amativeness, just here.
The bump of philoprogenitiveness, right behind the ear.
A landscape in bone.
A map of the soul we could hold.
In the lecture halls of 1828, we were men of reason.
We had calipers and charts and a proper system.
George Combe on the stage, the gaslight soft and yellow.
Explaining the architecture of a good fellow.
And the bad. Of course, the bad.
The slope of a forehead told you everything he had,
or lacked. It was so clean.
The world made sense on a shelf, serene.
Oh, the beautiful order of the bumps on a head.
The gospel of Gall, the words that Spurzheim said.
We drew our conclusions, so neat and so fine.
Proving the savage was savage by divine design.
A science of touch, a faith for the respectable.
We measured and we knew. It was all predictable.
The mahogany cabinets held the proof in white plaster.
Irishman, Hottentot, poet, and master.
Each one a specimen, each one a case.
A place for everyone, and everyone in their place.
And we believed it. I would have believed it.
Held the tools in my own hand, would have conceived it
as truth. As progress. A light in the gloom.
Dusting off the answers in a quiet room.
Then the century turned. The brain showed its wires.
The maps were all redrawn by new desires.
The faculties scattered, the organs went ghost.
And we had to disremember what we'd loved the most.
That simple, terrible key.
The shame of it, you see.
Not just that we were wrong, but what we built with the lie.
A reason for the cage, a motto to sell men by.
So you sit on the shelf now, a strange little curio.
The numbers have faded. The certainties go.
Amativeness. Veneration. Firmness.
Just a dusty white head in the growing darkness.
A forgotten promise.
A skull full of silence.