Lyrics: Marieke Ornelis
Music: Siebrand Verhulst
Performed by:
Meinse Verhulst (voice)
Brecht Valckenaers (piano)
Performed at This Is Not A Conert Hall
Crocodile
I wake up, I stand up, I’m fed up these days, fed up with these cornflakes, fed up with my own old ways. Nothing ever changes.
The sound of people not laughing is getting louder and louder. It’s not just the sound of silence that is deafening, numbing me. It’s the feeling that something is missing. That there’s an empty space in reality.
I knew I was happy with you, I thought that it was everything there was to know.
I look in the mirror above the bathroom sink and can’t help but to sink into myself. Nothing ever changes.
The world is spinning around spinning around me and you far too fast around we’re far too far away from each other spinning around this time yesterday everything was still clear. Reality didn’t have an empty space. You were still here. Everything changes.
Two eyes in the mirror stare back at me.
I know what I saw when I didn’t see what I had always thought I had been seeing.
I called you and I told you. About my skin getting thick and raw, about the colour moss green. I told you about how my body was about to burst, about my thirst, my teeth, my hunger, my jaw. I know what I saw. Everything changes.
Fun fact!
Did you know…
… that crocodiles don’t have tongues?
I told you about how I felt my tongue slowly disappear in my mouth. About how I felt myself disappearing. Or maybe becoming something else.
Fun fact!
Did you know…
… that crocodiles, other than most reptilians, don’t moult?
I told you about the way I move: low, slow, close to the ground. About how I slide into dark puddles of water, dark streams of thought. High tide. About how I’m almost at a point beyond retrieve. Two eyes stare back at me, floating just above the surface.
Fun fact!
Did you know…
… that when someone loses their mind in their own thoughts, they can turn into a crocodile?
Everything is changing, and at the same time nothing ever does. There’s an empty space in reality.
I told you. You said don’t cry crocodile tears.
siebrand 