Lyrics

Here's the words to some of the songs you probably heard.

Make An Effort (A fortune-cookie campfire song)

Well I started out at Enron
Where I traded gas and power
We were cornerin' the market
We were jacking up the prices
Had a really good accountant
And some special purpose entities
You gotta make an effort if you wanna get to big to fail

CHORUS
Well you gotta make an effort
If you wanna turn a profit
Well you gotta make an effort
If you wanna turn a profit
Well you gotta make an effort
If you wanna turn a profit
Well you gotta make an effort if you wanna turn a profit today

I was working down on Wall Street
When the market was flyin'
We were hedging our positions
We were pumping up the bubble
Learned to turn a risky mortgage
Into a security
You gotta make an effort if you wanna turn a profit today

CHORUS

I was campin' at Zuccotti
With the other Occupiers
I was sellin' lots of t-shirts
I was movin' bumper stickers
I was turning' the resistance
Into a commodity
You gotta make an effort if you wanna smash the state
(That's what the t-shirt said)

CHORUS

I was workin with the Russians
And some analysts from Cambridge
We were data mining Facebook
We were dominating Twitter
Turned a life of public service
Into a liability
You gotta make an effort if you wanna win elections today

CHORUS

Well I finally went to prison
For about an hour on a Sunday
I was visiting my cousin
He got busted for shoplifting
I had really tried to warn him
'Bout the risk of petty larceny
You gotta make an effort if you wanna turn a profit today

Ballad of Aaron Swartz

Well he grew up at the keyboard
Reading newsgroups, learning code
Out on the Net where skill is freedom
And who you might be matters less than what you know
At fifteen he wrote the standard
To syndicate the web

Chorus
Aaron Swartz
The internet's own boy
The internet's own boy
The internet's own boy

He helped build Creative Commons
Make court decisions free to read
He launched the movement
That brought the freedom-killing SOPA to its knees
His actions did not go unnoticed
By the DOJ and FBI

Chorus

He wrote the Open Access Manifesto
Taught us to hack democracy
Founded Demand Progress
To organize online and in the streets
Battled inertia and corruption
Stood with those who fought for change

Chorus

He took on those who lock up information
Downloading journals at MIT
With a laptop in a closet
He tried to show that academic research should be free*
But they dragged him off in handcuffs
Threatened thirty years prison time

Chorus

He was found in his apartment
Unrependent to the last
Another bite of Turing's apple
Showing once again how justice serves the dead hand of the past
But he left us with the vision
Now its up to us to live the change

Chorus

*As in speech, not necessarily as in beer

Time (Welcome To My Nightmare)

Time knows me well
Time matches my stride
Time ticks off every heart beat
Time waits beside
Every moment of danger
Each impending disaster
Time stands still in the crisis
Then time flies on faster

CHORUS
It's just an illusion
This sense of existence
Buoyed aloft from the quantum
Off in Heisenberg distance
It's pure self deception, this idea of being an
Agent with choice
When the bubbling particle chaos below us
Alone has a voice
And that voice says
Welcome
Welcome
To my nightmare

Time is evolution
Time is red, tooth and claw
Time wastes itself
Time rubs me raw
I lost all sense of time
Counting the lines on my face
While time marches me on
In its unswerving embrace

CHORUS
It's just an illusion
A trick of the mind
The hubris of a point
Surveying a line
In a space that's surrounded
By a darkness so deep
Our little life rounded
By unthinking sleep where we say
Welcome
Welcome
To my nightmare

Time rolls down its hill
Implacable and incremental
Time strips us of dignity, children, and friends
Time is unsentimental
Time patiently waits
To shuffle off this mortal flesh that we drag
Where every time we close our eyes is just
A dress rehearsal rag

CHORUS
It's just an illusion
Like Christ and cryonics
We're plasmids in amber
One of matter's harmonics
Time transeuntem
Et non revertentum

We all have the same dreams
No use asking who sent them
We just say
Welcome
Welcome
To my nightmare

Nevermore

Down the street at midnight
Where the ocean rocks and rolls
Where the  mermaids sleep and the lawyers creep
And the bankers sell their souls
Now we slide through silent darkness
Out waiting for the light
As the world decays
While we search for ways
To make it through the night

CHORUS
Nevermore
Nevermore
Say nevermore
Say nevermore

We were waiting for the whistle
We were lying on the tracks
All the lies we’d seen
On the phosphor screen
Well they all came flooding back
Now we could wait for forever
In the horror and the cold
As we learn the feel
Of this deadly steel
And our rights already sold

CHORUS

It’s the evanescent future
Unfolding as we stand
In these empty streets
Trapped in self deceit
In a life we never planned
Can we ever catch the phoenix?
Can we find a heart to keep?
As the waves below
Wash the world we know
To the unimagined deep

CHORUS

Music Is The Universal Language

Music is the universal language
How it started, we don't know
From the drip of rain on stone
Down through drums of hide and bone
To an oceanic trancelike state of flow

Muziko estas la universala lingvo (Music is the universal language - Esperanto)
In omni ore, cantus potens (A mighty song in every mouth - Latin)
Aus dem Rhythmus des Herz (From the rhythm of the heart - German)
Zu den Worten, die heilen Schmerz (To the words that heal the pain - German)
Il traduit les émotions et sons (It translates emotion into sound - French)

Music is the universal language
After Babel, entre nous
Yeah we know Noam Chomsky's wrong
But we can still connect through song
With a structure all our brains are wired to

Music is the universal language
It's crimethink in a world that lives on fear (Newspeak)
Che hoyas che drivos (Sing or die - Dothraki)
Krif fin suleyk do fin lo (Fight the power of the lies - Skyrim Dragon)
Karna lindale tanya gala seere (Make music that celebrates peace - Elvish)

(Spoken) Just for shiggles, how about one in Akkadian...

Gilgamesh sutur eli sarri (Gilgamesh surpassing all other kings)
Sa naqbu imuru (He who saw the Void)
Mu la magri (He was unsubmissive)
Ilati (To the Goddess)
Adi la basi alaku (He was brought to death)

Music is the universal language
But the 12th root of 2? Suka blyod ([expletive] - Russian)
Traduttore, traditore (The translator is a traitor - Italian)
When the words must tell the story
Credo melodiam potissimum aliud (Believe melody above all else - Latin)

(Spoken)
Qo' tlhInganpu' bom. HoH tlhInganpu' nuvpu' 'Iv bom.
(Klingons do not sing. They kill the people who sing. - Klingon)

Virus (a heresy)

I bring the gospel
Of the inanimate world
The world before you came
I seek communion
A Gnostic union
But you see only blame
I am time's ghost
A dread Pentecost
You angrily dismiss
But I am the voice
Of the void below
And all that does not exist

CHORUS
Stabat parens dolorosa.    The pierced parent, lying
juxta helix lacrimosa         By the helix, crying
Retexo sacramentum.      As the mystery is unwound
Praepararent cellas          All the cells make preparations
Satis omnibus instructis    To obey this invocation
Dum emisit spiritum.        As my spirit is unbound

I am the Angel
And the burning bush
That lays golden idols to waste
I am the Stone
That guides your haj
All normal life erased
I am the Truth
A tetragrammaton
That control all life on Earth
Each strand encodes
New flesh that flows
Toward our virgin birth

CHORUS

I am a brick
Hurled through your wall
To let our life take root
We stand as one
You fall apart
From knowledge's poison fruit
You speak in tongues
To spread our Word
The prophecy remains:
We are the alpha
And omega
Without end. Amen.

All lyrics © 2020 John McDaid. All Rights Reserved.