Retroception (3:33)

The story

Do you ever wake at 3:33 and feel you have been here before? I wrote this for that feeling, when time stops being a line and turns into a spiral. You are not lost when the clock stops making sense. You are standing in the middle of your own story, where the beginning and the end can both see you.

Lyrics

Time is a spiral, no, time is a joke,
Time is the echo of a clock that never spoke.
I wake up at three-three-three,
Or does three-three-three wake up inside me?

Déjà vu, déjà me, déjà you, déjà dream,
I was here, I was there, I was nowhere in between.
I am the drop, I am the wave,
I am the fire, I am the cave.
I am the traveler who never arrives,
I am the song that sings itself alive.

I don’t move, the world does.
I don’t ask, the answer was.
I don’t breathe, the breath takes me.
I don’t dream, the dream shakes me.

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!
I am awake, I am asleep,
I am the wave, I am the deep.
I build the world, I burn it down,
I wear the fire as a crown.

Time unfolds, the spiral bends,
The road begins where the story ends.
I touch the sky, I break the stream,
I am the dreamer inside the dream.

Flip it, twist it, break it, spin
Inside is out and out is in.
The sky is a river, the stars are eyes,
Everything is nothing in the shape of a sigh.

Madiba runs, Nelson waits,
The echoes crack, the future shakes.
I chase the dream, the dream is me,
I touch the song, the song breaks free.

Thsigga thschagga, shagga tik tok!
Tiko the clock rocks, time slips, knock knock!
Ping pan, danga alang!
Who set the metronome? BOOM BANG!

Hagu bagi, bigi bagi,
Karagi no malagi!
Numbers melt, seconds bend,
Tick tock never ends.

(The beat fractures, glitching through realities. The sound of a clock ticking… then reversing… then stopping entirely.)

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!
I am the echo, I am the key,
I am the road remembering me.
I touch the sky, I break the stream,
I am the dreamer inside the dream.

Do I wake? Do I dissolve?
Do I expand or do I revolve?
Do I leave or do I stay?
Or am I dreaming it all…
Either way?