La Glace

Lyrics

[Intro]
A terminal defense reaction.
The protocol is ancient. Inescapable.
It is not a choice.

[Verse 1]
The shadow falls. The equation simplifies.
There is no exit variable.
The amygdala, that old almond, makes the call.
No debate from the prefrontal.
All motor output is suppressed.
A message travels down the vagus nerve.
Not surrender. Not cowardice.
Just… a counterfeit of death.
A stillness older than our bones.

[Chorus]
And the body becomes ice.
La glace.
A perfect, fragile sculpture of terror.
Inside, the corticosterone screams in the blood.
A furnace of silent panic.
But on the surface…
Nothing.
A placid, frozen pond.
The predator looks, and looks away.

[Verse 2]
We saw it in the lab. Gallup, nineteen seventy-four.
In the chickens. A simple inversion, a line of chalk.
And the immobility descends.
Predictable. Repeatable.
Darwin saw it, eighteen fifty-nine.
Insects, spiders, feigning the end.
We give it a name to hold it at arm's length.
Tonic immobility.
We draw a neat box around the abyss.

[Chorus]
And the body becomes ice.
La glace.
A perfect, fragile sculpture of terror.
Inside, the furnace of silent panic.
But on the surface…
Nothing.
A placid, frozen pond.
The predator looks, and looks away.

[Bridge]
And where does the mind go?
It floats up to the ceiling corner.
It watches the scene from a great, calm distance.
A spectator to its own potential end.
This is the part missing from the record.
The subjective texture of the freeze.
The quiet hum of dissociation.
The body is an object on the floor.
Someone else’s problem.

[Outro]
Then, the thaw.
A tremor in the fingertip.
The return of weight.
The predator is gone.
But the cold…
The cold is archived.