La Règle

Lyrics

[Intro]
Cell A is here.
Cell B is over there.
Across the quiet gray matter, a synaptic cleft.
A silence.

[Verse 1]
Montreal. Nineteen forty-nine.
The snow is piling up on Sherbrooke Street.
Donald Olding Hebb, who once grew apples,
is thinking about the architecture of the mind.
He draws two circles on a page.
He says, when an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B...
and it happens again...
and again...
persistently...

[Chorus]
This is the rule.
This is the only rule that matters.
What fires together, wires together.
A whisper becomes a thought.
A thought becomes a road.
The path of least resistance is the one you built yourself.

[Verse 2]
The first time is a spark in the dark. A long way to go.
The hundredth time, the message arrives before it's even sent.
A growth process. A metabolic change.
It's the rats in the enriched cage, finding the lever faster each time.
It's the baker's hands, knowing the dough without looking.
It's my hand finding yours in the dark of the movie theater.
The first time was a choice.
Now, it is just what my hand does.

[Chorus]
This is the rule.
This is the only rule that matters.
What fires together, wires together.
A whisper becomes a thought.
A thought becomes a road.
The path of least resistance is the one we built together.

[Bridge]
At the Neurological Institute, Wilder Penfield would touch a patient's brain with a gentle current.
And a memory would bloom.
The smell of burning toast from a childhood kitchen.
A forgotten song.
Proof of the wire.
We are an archive of these connections.
The accent that stays.
The love that becomes a reflex.
The grief that carves a canyon you can't cross.
Every time you remember, you walk the path again.
You make it deeper.

[Outro]
Cell A fires.
Cell B fires.
There is no more space between them.
Just the wire.