Murmuring

Lyrics

[Intro]
(voices in another room — the rhythm of speech, none of the words)
Two people. Maybe three. Just through the wall.

[Verse 1]
It has the shape of a conversation. It has turns in it.
One voice goes up, another answers, somebody laughs a little,
there's a pause exactly where a pause would go —
and it is not in a language, and there are no words in it at all.
Pure syntax with the meaning taken out. Pure prosody.
The music of talking, with nobody talking.

[Chorus]
Murmuring. In the next room. Behind the wall.
A television left on in a house with no television.
People discussing something calmly, at some length,
and none of it is words, and none of them are there.
Murmuring. You strain toward it. Everyone strains.
And straining is exactly what makes it stop.

[Verse 2]
Sometimes one phrase comes clear — one, right in the middle —
and it is always banal. That's the tell. It's always banal.
"Well, that's the one for Tuesday." "Put it by the door."
Perfectly ordinary sentences from a conversation that isn't.
Never a message. Never a name. Never a warning.
Just admin, from nowhere, in a voice you almost know.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And I would like to say something plain about all of this,
because people get frightened, and the fright is the worst part:
this is not a haunting, and it is not a symptom,
it is a brain releasing the machinery of speech in stages,
and running the pattern with the content already gone.
It is the commonest thing in the world. It is happening tonight in every house on your street.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the voices, fading, mid-sentence)
They've stopped.
No — they haven't stopped. You've stopped hearing.