Confabulation

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a gramophone playing a melody — then the needle skips, replays the same phrase differently)
(detuned piano enters, uncertain, as if improvising a memory of a song it used to know)
(distorted bass — Chronos arriving, heavy, confused)

[Verse 1]
(NORMAL + IDLEWILD)
I remember the fire of 1666
Or I remember remembering it
The frontal lobe has a filing clerk
Who has been filling the gaps
With whatever was lying around —
A postcard from a century I visited once
A woman's laugh borrowed
From a cocktail party
That may have been a cathedral
That may have been a war

The source monitoring system
Has the integrity of a concierge
Who has been tipping the bellboys
To rearrange the luggage
So that everyone checks out
With someone else's memories
And no one complains
Because the memories fit
Surprisingly well

[Pre-Chorus]
(TYPHON + SIGH)
The corridor of my past
Is wallpapered with events
That have the weight of having happened
And the texture of wet ash
And I cannot tell
Which of them I witnessed
And which of them
The brain assembled
From the spare parts
Of a Tuesday
I may not have attended

[Chorus]
(heavy, the key shifting — the song can't remember its own key)
Confabulation, confabulation
The brain writes fiction and stamps it as real
Confabulation, confabulation
The source code has been edited
And the editor forgot to feel
Guilty about it
I remember the revolution
I remember the bread
I remember things that happened
To someone else's head
And I wore them home
Like a stranger's coat
That fit

[Verse 2]
(ATA + SIGH — just voice and cello, the most unreliable Chronos has ever sounded)
The hippocampus is an archive
Staffed by a librarian
Who has been writing in the margins
Of every book she was hired to preserve

And the margins have become
More convincing than the text
And the text has started citing the margins
As primary sources
And the primary sources
Smell like the feeling
Of a verdict
Delivered by a judge
Who is also the defendant
And the courtroom
Is made of the evidence
It was built to examine

I'm eleven billion years old
And I genuinely don't know
If I watched the first star die
Or if I read about it
In a book I wrote
About a thing I dreamed
About a star
That may have been a lamp

[Chorus]
Confabulation, confabulation
The brain writes fiction and stamps it as real
Confabulation, confabulation
The source code has been edited
And the editor forgot to feel
Guilty about it

[Bridge]
(everything drops — just voice and the gramophone skip from the intro, repeating)
(IDLEWILD + TYPHON)
There is a room in every brain
Where the things that happened
And the things that almost happened
And the things that should have happened
Share a drink
At a zinc bar
In a hotel
That was demolished in a year
The bar still remembers
But the year doesn't

(the gramophone skips again — the same phrase, different each time)

And the bartender
Has the face of everyone
I've ever known
Simultaneously
And pours a tincture
That tastes like the feeling
Of being certain
About something
That never occurred

And the certainty
Is the cruelest part
Not the forgetting
The certainty

(distorted bass returns — heavy, resigned)

Because a lie you doubt
Is just a story
But a lie you believe
Is a memory
And a memory
Is all I am

[Outro]
(the gramophone plays the melody one last time — which version is the original? impossible to tell)
Confabulation
(gravelly, almost amused, almost broken)
I remember everything
I just don't know
Which of it
Was mine
(the needle lifts — silence)
(but is it silence? or is the silence a memory of silence that the brain is generating right now?)