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Vowl Sounds - Squid Linguistics

from SpinTunes #16 Round 1 by Spintunes

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Liner Notes:
I studied linguistics and have spent my career working in translation, so movies about linguists always delight me. (The only other one I can think of off the top of my head right now is Stargate, but that is a 100% delight ratio, so it's not a lie.) I also love it when aliens get weird and aren't just a human with a prosthetic forehead.

Speaking of Worf, this movie is based on taking the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to a logical extreme. (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that the language you speak changes your perception of the world.) At first I started trying to write about that, but I got stuck and decided to go back and approach it from a different angle: the mother-daughter relationship, and the decision parents make to bring children into the world knowing that they'll suffer and die. (Is it selfish?) This movie takes that idea to its extreme as well.

The movie is called Arrival, because it's about our first contact from aliens who arrive on earth, but in the song, the only mention of arrival is in reference to the birth of the narrator's daughter. I wanted to write the prechorus and chorus as kind of a fakeout where it appears at first that they apply to the aliens, but later are explicitly actually about the child. (I was trying to make the first verse more ambiguous, about an ultrasound, and thinking of the circle of ink as a fingerprint, but I got it wrong, they print the baby's feet.)

"The mirror crack'd from side to side" is a line from Lord Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott"--The Lady of Shalott is cursed to weave endlessly at an enchanted loom and only see the outside world as reflections in a mirror, but when she sees Sir Lancelot ride by her tower, she leaves her loom and looks out the window at him, and when she sees the real world directly instead of as shadowy reflections, the mirror cracks and she dies (after floating downstream in a boat, singing, with a suicide note, for some reason). So I thought it was an interesting parallel to the plot of Arrival--her decision to destroy the safe and comfortable world she's known in exchange for a brief, vivid taste of reality.

lyrics

Lyrics:
This is the end, or is it where we begin?
A circle of ink in place of a name
Listening eyes, shapes moving in mist
What was I for before all of this?

The stars moved so I could meet you
Our planet opened up its sleepy eyes
I spent my life racing towards this moment
I spent my life yearning for this time

I give you words
And you give me worlds
Grains of sand
And you give me pearls
You give me worlds

In the hospital bed, I cry in relief
At your soft little hands and your sweet little feet
Hannah, my perfect child
What was I for before you arrived?

The stars moved so I could meet you
The mirror cracked from side to side
I spent my life racing towards this moment
When I could see you open up your eyes

If you could see your whole life from beginning to end,
Would you change things?
Is it selfish to choose love over nothing?
Would you have done the same thing?

I gave you words
And you gave me worlds
Grains of sand
And you gave me pearls
I gave you life
I gave you pain
Did I make the right choice?
Oh, Hannah,
I'd do it again
I'd do it again

credits

from SpinTunes #16 Round 1, released February 2, 2020

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Spintunes Union, South Carolina

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