Super-System

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
Stephen, it's 2 AM in that Chapel Hill lab,
University of North Carolina, 1995.
Your Grass Model 7 Polygraph whirs softly,
ink pens scratching secrets on rolling paper.
I lean close, feel the chill of 68 degrees on my skin,
that wandering vagus nerve you named,
meandering through me like a lost river.

[Chorus]
Oh, super-system, my hidden architect,
you connect and protect, alarm and calm.
Electrodes cold and sticky on my chest,
measuring the tone of my wandering nerve.
You're more than wires and pulses,
a web of resilience in the dark.

[Verse 2]
The antiseptic wipe stings, alcohol faint,
stale coffee cup forgotten on the bench.
You capture my heart's variability,
that polyvagal dance of fight or friend.
Porges, you said it's not just alarm,
it's connection, protection, a quiet force.
I address you, machine of revelations,
tracing the super-system within.

[Chorus]
Oh, super-system, my hidden architect,
you connect and protect, alarm and calm.
Electrodes cold and sticky on my chest,
measuring the tone of my wandering nerve.
You're more than wires and pulses,
a web of resilience in the dark.

[Bridge]
In the dead of night, data unspools like thread,
anonymized subjects, their stories untold.
But I feel it, the second brain in my gut,
wandering nerve touching every organ.
Stephen's theory breathes life into the charts,
resilience woven from evolutionary threads.

[Verse 3]
Press the pads to my neck, hear the low hum,
rhythmic as a distant heartbeat on paper.
1995, Psychophysiology journal pages turn,
your words: mammalian modifications,
orienting in a defensive world.
Super-system, you make me whole,
from chaos to calm, one breath at a time.

[Outro]
Super-system, whisper your protections,
wandering nerve, carry me through.