A song by Seraphino Aurelius Belladonna
Count Every Breath
An answer to those who believe that naming every mechanism of art is the same as explaining its wonder.
- From the album
- As It Ought to Be
- Album sequence
- Track 6 of 14
- First released
- Running time
- 5:21
The matter at hand
What the song concerns
The song dismantles a performance into breath, vibration, timing, muscle, and craft, then asks what such an inventory has actually explained. Skeptical analysis can describe the machinery of a voice without accounting for why one voice enters memory and another does not.
Seraphino does not reject technique; he insists that technique is the threshold rather than the destination. Counting each breath may reveal how a phrase was made, but not where it carries the listener.
In his own estimation
Seraphino, upon its composition
Certain clever persons delight in reducing wonder to components. They count breaths, measure intervals, identify every device, and then announce the mystery solved. I admire measurement. I object only when the ruler is mistaken for the cathedral.
This composition granteth the anatomist his wish: every hinge may be named, every motion observed. Yet after all the counting, the central question remaineth untouched. Knowing how the lock yielded doth not tell thee where the opened door leadeth. Craft is real, discipline essential, and neither makes beauty less mysterious.
“Knowing how the lock gave way shall never show where doors do stray.”
The complete text
Lyrics
They came with lanterns small and bright
To meet the borders of the night,
With rods to reckon thunder’s cry
And laws forbidding light the sky.
“No mortal throat may hold that sound;
No heart may bear a depth profound.”
I cast each casement open wide:
“Now count each breath I spend,” I cried.
Mark ye the hour my courage parts;
Name where the false enchantment starts—
Yet bring some art that wonder charts,
And scales to weigh the breaking hearts.
Count every breath, count every lie;
Count every note I cast on high.
Call it a trick, a juggler’s hand—
Still shalt thou tremble where thou stand.
Strip thou the velvet and the flame;
Take thou the echo and my name.
When nawt remains save voice and breath—
Come nearer.
Count each breath.
The dancer hides where wounds have bled;
The painter veils each broken thread.
The faithful name it Heaven’s gleam;
The fearful call it but a dream.
Thou seek-est cords that lift me higher
Above the stone and through the fire—
Yet knowing how the lock gave way
Shall never show where doors do stray.
Each miracle through labor came;
Each mystery bears a scar and name.
Though thou may-est chart the roads afar,
Thou canst not thus explain a star.
Count every breath, count every lie;
Count every note I cast on high.
Call it a trick, a juggler’s hand—
Still shalt thou tremble where thou stand.
Strip thou the velvet and the flame;
Take thou the echo and my name.
When nawt remains save voice and breath—
Come nearer.
Count each breath.
Count each breath.
No minstrel band.
No silver wire.
No choir concealed behind the fire.
No second tongue.
No merciful room.
One candle vexing all the gloom.
Stand thou beside me.
Turn not away.
Count what I spend
And what thou shalt pay.
Count every breath, if count thou must,
And count each note drawn from the dust.
Call it a trick; may-hap all art
Is mortal hand and beating heart.
Take thou the velvet and the flame;
Take thou the legend—leave the name.
And when my final note out-liv-eth death—
Hold thy peace.
Thou hast lost thy breath.
Further evidence