The Library of Everything

1:09

The architects of language built the prison from the floor plans

But left the blueprints in the margins of the poor mans war chants

So the chorus that you swear by was assembled from the orphans hands

Borrowed anthems, borrowed lanterns guiding borrowed caravans

Through a borrowed night, the stars are just the property of Morgans brands

And the morning after never gave the mourning man a Normans chance

Clocks are just agreements between strangers on the violence of the hour

Seven billion people share a breakfast but they cant divide the flour

Half are tending to the fire while the other half devour

What the first half spent the season and the soil and the shower

Growing roots that told them they would never reach the tower

And the tower never answers cause the tower has no power

The grammar of the galaxy is written in the calcium

Of creatures gone before the Romans built the Colosseum

Pangaea never asked permission when it cracked the medium

Between the land and sea, the continents proceeded

And what we call division was the earth completing

A geometry no cartographer had ever found a reason for believing

Still drew the lines in ink and died defending what was leaving

The apple knew the physics long before the sitting

Every law of nature is the universe committing

To a promise, Newton named it, but the naming aint the fitting

Gravity existed in the absence of submitting

To a language and the language is the ceiling and the splitting

Between the wilderness that knew and those who called it written

Television raised the children that the buildings couldnt hold

Sega Genesis mythology, the stories never told

In the manual flipped it to the back where all the cheats were scrolled

And memorized the konami before the prayers were enrolled

Cause the church of entertainment had the youngest of the old

Congregation genuflecting to a screen both warm and cold

Education is a hallway with a thousand numbered doors

And the teachers only carry keys that fit the corporate floors

So the curious get restless and they pace the corridor

Looking for the handle that was never in the floor

And the handles in the asking and the asking is ignored

When the answers on the test sheet and the test sheet is the lord

The light that fills the ceiling came from somewhere past the patents

Rewritten in the ledgers by the lawyers and their rations

A genius turned to ghost, the voltage filed in fractions

The courts of commerce always force the vision into abstraction

The system never honors what it cannot parcel into factions

Then sells it back to builders after doubling the transaction

Maps are made by those who moved the borders after conquest

The legend on the corner shows the symbols for the context

But theres never been a legend for the absent and the lost flesh

The cartographers were careful never drafting what the cost meant

So the document of record is a document of commerce

And the commerce is the compass and the compass is the hostage

In the knowing, but the knowing was a kettle calling better

And the kettle was a parable for staying on the pedal

While the bicycle keeps moving and the moving keeps the metal

From the rusting, and the rusting is what happens when you settle

Time is made of wax and only needs the right conditions

What we call the permanent is subject to revisions

In the presence of enough heat thats surrealisms mission

Dali hung the clocks to melt because the clocks were prisons

And the prison guards were calendars and schedules and decisions

That convinced the mind the possible was blocked by its omissions

Silence isnt empty its a frequency worth mining

The deaf compose by touching what the hearing keeps declining

Beethoven lost the surface but the structure kept on climbing

Built the Ninth in silence thats a whole life worth of divining

What the body thinks it needs before it starts aligning

With the deeper signal underneath the obvious designing

The Library of Alexandria is somewhere in the server

And the server farm is burning through the power of the burner

That the planet spent a million years converting into vapor

Now converting into data at a rate that has no paper

Wide enough to document the loss inside the labor

of building something infinite from something finite, later

Great Wall of China built by hands that never touched the palace

And the palace never worried cause the wall absorbed the malice

Of the outside but the outside was a mirror and the callous

Truth was every walls a frame around the fear inside the chalice

That the builders of the palace raised on Sundays with a solace

That the gods of the dynasty would keep the cup in balance

James Brown on the one beat, thats a sermon in a snare hit

Every function of a culture is embedded in the care that

Goes into the rhythm that the rhythm section dares it

To become a living document, the people who prepare it

Never write the liner notes and history wont wear it

But the body always knows the frequency and hears it

The ocean doesnt know its name but knows exactly where its going

Every current in the water is a sentence being spoken

In a language pre linguistic, anterior to broken

And the breaking of a wave is just a word thats been unfolding

From a sentence formed in fathoms where the light was never holding

And the light was never promised but the water kept on flowing

The candle and the spotlight share the physics of the burning

But the candle lights a conversation and the spotlight lights the yearning

To be seen from farther distances, the gap between them turning

Into everything that separates the intimate from performing

And the performing isnt living, its the living re-informing

A performance of a life designed to keep the living norming

Carbon is the alphabet the universe prefers for writing

Hydrogen and oxygen complete the words for inviting

New arrangements, new editions, with the new editions re-igniting

What the previous edition burned, and burning is the lighting

That makes dark material visible, illuminating, brightening

The oration is a weapon and the weapon has a record

Cicero could bend a senate hall with just a lecture

Laws that fed the legions came from syllables and texture

Of a voice that knew the crowd, the demagogue instructor

And the crowd was just the hammer and the orator the conductor

So the music of a nation is whoever built the structure

The shortest distance through a line requires going through it

Payton never ran around he ran into it, truest

Form of courage is the impact that you choose before you view it

As an obstacle, the path is in the moment that you pursue it

Not the moment after, not the preparation, doing it

Is the whole philosophy, the rest is just reviewing it

The flag was made of fabric and the fabric came from somewhere

And the somewhere is a country and the country is a prayer

That the founders of the country hoped the future wouldnt tear the

Seams apart, but seams are where the pressure always tears there

And the tearing is the testing and the testing is whats fair here

And the fair is just a carnival and carnivals dont care there

Fingerprints are maps of what the body went through forming

In the womb, unique additions, never twice the same adorning

Every human is a limited release without a warning

Label, fragile, handle carefully the factory is morning

Every morning is a different run, a different day of dawning

And the dawn is just the data that the darkness kept on storing

If the answer to the universe is forty-two then Douglas

Adams was a prophet and the prophet was the ruckus

That the question always makes when it refuses to discuss its

Own irrelevance, the question is the compass and the crux is

Knowing what to do with all the beautiful and fuss that

Comes from being conscious in a cosmos absent justice

or full of it and only fools refuse to keep adjusting