Le Mur

Lyrics

The diagnosis is simple.
The architecture is sound, the intellect intact.
The concept, a perfect crystal held in the mind's hand.
But the hand cannot open.
The bridge to the tongue is... out.

We are in Paris. Hôpital Bicêtre.
The year is eighteen sixty-one.
A patient, Louis Victor Leborgne.
He understands the question perfectly.
The answer is there. Formulated. Correct.
He opens his mouth and offers you the only tool he has left.
Tan.
He says it twice. Tan. Tan.
With an intonation that suggests a universe of meaning.
A key for a lock that has been melted shut.

There is a wall.
Le Mur.
On one side, the cathedral of thought, every archway lit.
On the other side, the rubble of the syllable.
The blueprint is clear. The connection is severed.
The signal is sent, but the line is dead.
The wall stands.

Then comes Wernicke, in seventy-four.
A different kind of ruin.
This patient speaks. Oh, he speaks.
A river of beautiful, grammatical... nonsense.
A fluent, melodic cascade of words that connect to nothing.
A word salad, tossed with the finest oil and vinegar.
He asks for a... a "plimble for his cran."
And smiles, completely satisfied.
Two sides of the same shattered mirror.

There is a wall.
Le Mur.
On one side, the cathedral of thought, every archway lit.
On the other side, the rubble of the syllable. Or the flood of the meaningless.
The blueprint is clear. The connection is severed.
The signal is sent, but the line is dead.
The wall stands.

Strange, the back roads the brain keeps open.
Leborgne could swear. A sacred name. An obscenity.
And he could sing.
He could sing a melody with words he could not speak.
As if music was a ghost that could walk through the wall.
His brain is still there, you know.
In a jar at the Musée Dupuytren.
You can see the lesion. The small, dark country where the words went to die.
A physical fact. So small, for such a great silence.

The diagnosis is simple.
The concept is clear.
The wall is...
Tan.
Tan.