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Oxygen

from Symbiogenesis by Michael Bell

/

lyrics

The first time I saw them beneath the lens, I was helpless to tears. Tiny green filaments danced within a droplet of oil.

Cyanobacteria. The things that made our sky.

2.4 billion years ago, they created a disaster of immeasurable scale. Verdant mats of cyanobacteria learned to absorb light and exhale oxygen — A rarefied gas in those early skies. It was a fickle, reactive thing, transforming all that it touched. As verdant scum produced ever more oxygen and their stromatolites rose higher and higher, the world began to rust.

It took land and sea alike. Sandstone cliffsides turned ferric red as oxidizing winds howled. Viridian waters turned deathly clear, bleeding shimmering bands of magnetite. As rust took the planet, there was nowhere left but the skies. Oxygen flooded that primordial atmosphere, and the creatures of the ancient world choked on a strange and deadly air.

What few survived learned to breathe deep the calamitous haze, exhaling forms of intricacy untold. Uncountable more were lost forever — Too small to fossilize. Too small for us to remember.

We are children of disaster, blessed with memory and volition unbound.

Once more the sky burns with acrid air not meant for us.

This time it can be stopped.

credits

from Symbiogenesis, released August 17, 2023

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about

Michael Bell Bellingham, Washington

A Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too.

Some of this is music for video games. The rest is a fairly raw document of my ongoing attempt to find something new among the blinking lights in my studio at home.

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