SONG:
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Discover, 3 Nov 21, “How Citizen Scientists Uncovered the Strange Behavior of ‘Vampire’ Butterflies,” as used in the post “Indonesian citizen scientists discover VAMPIRE CANNIBAL BUTTERFLIES.”
ABSTRACT:
The process for writing this felt a little like a remix. I took a loop – that harp arpeggio that starts this – and used it to write lyrics for a completely different song for a project that I’m doing with some other friends elsewhere. (I stripped away the music and just gave them words with a melody.) Then, without the loop, I just wrote some words here about VAMPIRE CANNIBAL BUTTERFLIES that had a regular enough meter and wondered what kind of song I could turn them into, and so… I took the loop, reshaped it, and sang the words over it. (On the words: I was never really a goth, never even a huge Current 93 fan, but here we are, delicately murmuring about murderous, hungry parents with beautiful wings.) The other sounds followed as accents, shaping out pre-choruses and instrumental solos. As with the last song, I recorded vox with nothing more than the onboard condenser mic on the laptop, but with a clean and quiet voice, not something blown-out and broken… and it still gave me the feel I wanted. Huh.
The drums were based on a trick my friend Jon Wilkins introduced me to while sitting in on one of my very few live performances. I had a very slow, hypnotic cover of “The Bed’s Too Big Without You,” not as punk-reggae, but as a kind of three notes on a guitar plodding thing. And he just, without ever hearing what I was doing or rehearsing at all, sitting behind me on stage, came up with this drum thing that was all rising waves of 32nd notes. This was years before I ever heard Death Cab for Cutie do something similar for their cover over “All Is Full Of Love” – just a rain of frantic drums, like someone is freaking out because of the intensity of the slow, simple chords over the top of it. It’s very hard to program MIDI drums to sound like that, but I did my best here.
It’s basically doing what I want it to – something hypnotic and engrossing but also terrifying and panic-inducing. Watching the pretty butterflies descend in the tranquil, sunlit, forest glade to feed on their own children. Sometimes, the world is beautiful, and sometimes it is something else.
LYRICS:
There is nothing sweet about the wings
Encircling their children’s bodies
Red and hungryThere is nothing pure about the white
And trembling cloud of eager parents
Ready to feed..They look like butterflies
Those are not flowers
That is not nectar
Those are not flowers
Where they are feeding
What are they eating?There is nothing gentle in the jaws
Unwinding mouths toward the plump skin
Of caterpillarsThere is nothing peaceful in the sight
Of swirling messengers of sunlight
Swarming to feed..Yes, these are butterflies
Those are not flowers
That is not nectar
Those are not flowers
Where they are feeding
What are they eating?
What are they eating?