L'Étincelle

Lyrics

[Intro]
Quiet now.
Just the salt sea inside.
A thin membrane, the only wall between what is
and what could be.
Negative seventy millivolts of peace.

[Verse 1]
Sodium waits outside the gate, a crowd pressing.
Potassium is patient, inside.
The pump works silently, a tireless bailer in a leaky boat,
maintaining the difference.
Just a whisper of stimulus. Not enough.
Another. Closer now.
The charge creeps up from the floor.

[Chorus]
But it is all or it is nothing.
There is no *almost* a thought. No *maybe* a memory.
You reach the threshold, or you stay in the quiet dark.
L'Étincelle. The spark.
The one, indivisible, irreversible… yes.

[Verse 2]
Luigi Galvani saw you in a dead thing.
Late 1780s, a storm over Bologna.
A frog's leg on an iron railing,
touched by brass.
It kicked.
Not life, but the ghost of a message.
He called it animal electricity. The spark in the meat.

[Chorus]
And it is all or it is nothing.
There is no *almost* a kick. No *maybe* a twitch.
You reach the threshold, or the leg lies still.
L'Étincelle. The spark.
The one, indivisible, irreversible… yes.

[Bridge]
Then Hodgkin and Huxley, in fifty-two.
They took a giant axon from a squid,
so big you could see it with your own eyes.
They clamped its voltage, held it still.
And watched you on a green screen, a wave of light.
The sodium gate flying open. The rise. The fall.
A beautiful, predictable storm.

[Outro]
And from that one wave, that single, perfect yes…
a cascade down the line.
The spark that becomes the word.
The word that becomes the feeling.
The all-or-nothing that becomes…
…I remember.
…I understand.
…I do.