Exploding Head

Lyrics

[Intro]
(absolute silence — then an enormous bang — then nothing)
There is no bang. Understand that first. There is no bang.

[Verse 1]
You are nearly gone. You are right at the lip of it.
And the room detonates. A door slammed by a giant.
A gunshot in the hallway. A skip dropped from a crane.
Something enormous and structural and directly beside your head.
And you are bolt upright with your heart going like a bird
and the house is perfectly quiet and has been the whole time.

[Chorus]
EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME! That is the actual name!
That is what it is called in the actual literature!
A sound with no source, at the moment of going under,
loud enough to wake you and made entirely of nothing!
Exploding head. It is harmless. It is completely harmless.
It is also the most frightening thing that will happen to you this week.

[Verse 2]
Sometimes it's a flash instead. Sometimes both together.
Sometimes a bang so specific you could name the object —
a plate, a plank, a firework, a car door, a shot —
and you lie there doing forensics on a sound that never happened.
No pain. That's the diagnostic. No pain, no damage, nothing.
Just the adrenaline, which takes forty minutes to leave.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
One theory: the brainstem shuts the systems down in sequence,
and now and then the switch for hearing fires instead of falling,
a whole sensory channel discharging at once as it goes,
which is not a bang at all, it is the ABSENCE of a bang,
rendered by an ear with nothing better to do.
The loudest sound you ever heard was made of silence.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(silence again, and a long shaky breath)
Nothing fell.
Nothing anywhere fell.