August Dupin (Bedroom Demo #77) (Patreon)

August Dupin
words and music: Terry Scott Taylor
©2018 Shape Of Air Music, BMI

A tell-tale heart is softly beating

Behind the walls, the floor, the ceiling

Of the locked room where we’re kneeling

To touch the stain left by your bleeding

Which formed this imprint of your head

Can these clues be more intriguing

When no who-done-it is this misleading?

We’ve deduced you can’t be breathing

So are we premature in grieving

Though it’s very clear that you are dead?

So bringing wits and secret ciphers,

IPads, quills, pens, and typewriters,

The book world’s prominent insiders

Arrive to make our burden lighter

And to have a look around

That’s when Gaiman, Moore, and King say

“We have found a hidden doorway”

Then going down a winding stair case,

In Lewis Carrol style, our foray

Shortly leads us underground

To a shadowy room that is concealing

Truths Sir Doyle’s candlelight’s revealing

Not dead-ends, canards, or double dealings,

Herrings red, or dark deceivings,

Folklore, myths, tall-tales, or fables

It is the thing we’ve all been seeking,

Once diaphanous and fleeting

A tell-tale heart still softly beating

Wrapped in parchment we are reading,

Nailed to a bloody, broken table

Wide-eyed, stunned, and barely breathing,

Each sleuth silently retreating

Without the need to say in leaving

“There is enough here for believing

That is, of course, assuming we are able”

So in the end there’s this,

The stunning final twist;

All in all

We never saw

All we are now seeing

                                                               -finis-

instruments and vocals: T.S. Taylor

note: 

A couple of years back I conceived the idea of creating a song that would be a kind of literary detective story in which certain theological implications were hinted at. The idea would be to bring several old school authors of the fantastic/mysterious along side their modern counterparts to form a collective of literary sleuths making use of their particular skills to chase down clues and solve a particularly puzzling metaphysical mystery. I named my musical allusion after Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional character August Dupin, considered to be literature’s very first detective. Listeners will note that Dupin’s name appears nowhere in the lyrics; this is for the simple reason that I’ve imagined him to be the first person narrator of the tale.