SONG: “Visibility” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “Strange fish has a see-through head”, MSNBC/LiveScience, 23 Feb 2009, as used in the post “Barreleye, I can see inside your head.”
ABSTRACT:
This is a song in the form of a conversation between the Barreleye (Macropinna microstoma, the narrator) and Robin (either Triglidae or Turdus migratorius – it’s ambiguous, although the habitat lends itself to the former). Far be it from your humble guildmaster to compare the world of indie pop to the murky depths of the benthic (or bathypelagic) marine environment, but once the idea asserted itself, it was hard to shake. Plus, I promised a third kind of Robin, an indefatigable online booster and social networking maven found here, that I’d write a song for her. Because she deserves songs. Often, when it comes to self-promotion, I feel like the barreleye must feel around other fish. I mean, sea robins have legs, and they’re not half as strange as the guy with the fishtank on his head. Oh, wait, that fishtank is his head. Has he been watching us the whole time? Should we let on that we’ve noticed him?
Robin does not have a fishtank on her head.
I also feel like I should credit Things in Herds because I was sure I stole the hook from a song of theirs, but I just listened to three of their albums (all that I own), and I can’t find the song. I may have imagined it, but don’t think I did. Anyway, their song (or the one my memory made up by them) didn’t have a toy piano playing that hooky part, and probably wasn’t about deep sea creatures or my friend Robin. It also lacked a hulusi and didn’t have percussion made from samples of my 6-year-old daughter’s voice. It may have made its makers as happy as this one made me. Perhaps it did.
LYRICS:
If you fall – down – here / I’d say I’d help you find your very own flashlight
Or you dis-ap-pear / Things are different in the permanent midnightWhen Robin said / She likes the window in my head
In the sun, she sees right through me
Doesn’t everyone / Want a place in the sun?
Doesn’t everyone / Want visibility?Visibility x4
Then Robin says, / “Barreleye, add one more friend to your network,
Don’t just float in space – / A few more links and you could really hit paydirt.”I keep looking up, / From the shadows I see everything,
Behind my head / Show me how to grow a robin’s wings
I roll back my eyes / Floating inside my transparent skull
My personal / VisibilityVisibility / (Personal) visibility
(My personal) visibility / (Personal) visibility(SOLO)
And Robin said / She likes the window in my head
In the sun, she sees right through me
Doesn’t everyone want a place in the sun?
Doesn’t everyone want visibility?Visibility / Visibility
(Everyone) visibility / VisibilityVisibillity x3