Chambre d'Écho

Lyrics

It was just a name.
A footnote in an article I was reading late last night.
Two German names, hard on the tongue.
From nineteen ninety-four.

A man named Terry Mullen, on some forgotten digital wall.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press forum, glowing green in the dark.
He learned about a terrorist group, a footnote to a war.
And then the world conspired to speak of nothing more.
He heard it on the news.
He saw it in a book.
He said, the world has changed its tune, just have a look.
Baader-Meinhof.
Just a sound.

And now I hear it too.
It’s a red car at the corner, and then another one.
And a third one, waiting for the light.
It’s a word I never knew, and now it’s on your lips,
and in the song the radio just chose to play tonight.
This isn’t magic.
It’s just the little wrinkle in the silk.
The filter changed, the signal's getting through.
My own private Chambre d'Écho, and the only voice is you.
Or a name I just learned.

This morning, at the market, two women by the cheese.
...Baader-Meinhof...
I swear that’s what they said.
And the book I bought for you, on page forty-seven.
A passing reference, underlined in red.
It’s not the world that’s changed. I know that.
It’s the tuning of the dial in my head.
The notice-me-not flower that suddenly blooms instead.

A man named Arnold Zwicky, he had a colder name for it.
Selective attention. A trick of the mind.
A bias for the pattern you just decided to find.
You tell the watchman at the gate, "look for a man in blue,"
and suddenly the street is filled with nothing else.
It's just a frequency illusion.
The map re-drawing itself.

And now I hear it too.
It’s a red car at the corner, and then another one.
And a third one, waiting for the light.
It’s a word I never knew, and now it’s on your lips,
and in the song the radio just chose to play tonight.
This isn’t magic.
It’s just the little wrinkle in the silk.
The filter changed, the signal's getting through.
My own private Chambre d'Écho...

And the funny thing is,
now that I know the name for the thing...
The thing I see everywhere...
is the name.
Baader-Meinhof.
Baader-Meinhof.