A Different World in Each One's Mind

     "Wildly, like trapped animals, the seven of them made their way forward into the darkness of the living room. Under their feet, the carpet stirred restlessly. They could hear it all around them, the uneasy living presence, rippling and fretting, struggling into irritable animation....
     "On all sides, lamps and books stirred sullenly. Once, Mrs. Pritchet gave a mindless squeak of terror; the cord of the television set had craftily wrapped itself around her ankle. Bill Laws, with a swift yank of his hand, snapped the cord and pulled her loose. Behind them, the severed cord lashed furiously, impotently."

— Eye in the Sky, Philip K. Dick

Gubble gubble gubble

     "Bending over her he saw her languid, almost rotting beauty fall away. Yellow cracks spread through her teeth, and the teeth split and sank into her gums, which in turn became green and dry like leather, and then she coughed and spat up into his face quantities of dust. The Gubbler had gotten her, he

PKD reading Blade Runner article
Photo courtesy of Philip K. Dick Trust

realized....
     "Her eyes fused over, opaque, and from behind one eye the lashes became the furry, probing feet of a thick-haired insect stuck back there wanting to get out. Its tiny pin-head red eye peeped past the loose rim of her unseeing eye, and then withdrew; after that the insect squirmed, making the dead eye of the woman bulge, and then, for an instant, the insect peered through the lens of her eye, looked this way and that, saw him but was unable to make out who or what he was; it could not fully make use of the decayed mechanism behind which it lived....
     "The dead mouth twitched and then from deep inside at the bottom of the pipe which was the throat a voice muttered, 'You weren't fast enough.' And then the head fell off entirely, leaving the white pointed stick-like end of the neck projecting.

— Martian Time-Slip, Philip K. Dick

"Her heart ... was an empty kitchen: floor tile and water pipes and a drainboard with pale scrubbed surfaces, and one abandoned glass on the edge of the sink that nobody cared about." - A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

Flow My Tears - the policeman said

"Flow, My Teares (Lachrimae)"

(John Dowland 1563-1626)

Flow my teares fall from your springs,


Exilde for ever: Let me morne


Where nights black bird hir sad infamy sings,


There let me live forlorne.

Downe vaine lights shine you no more,


No nights are dark enough for those


That in dispaire their last fortunes deplore,


Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,


Since pittie is fled,


And teares, and sighes, and grones  
My wearie days 
of all joyes have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment,


My fortune is throwne,


And feare, and griefe, and paine
 
For my deserts, are my hopes since hope is gone.

Hark you shadowes that in darnesse dwell,


Learn to contemne light,


Happy they that in hell


Feele not the worlds despite.

Flow My Tears - The Policeman Said, the novel by Philip K. Dick, refers to this haunting song from long ago and only yesterday (the Sting 2006 recording). By the time the novel's policeman appeals to his tears, they well-up easily enough in the reader. There seems to be reference to Dick's long departed twin sister in this work which, of course, adds to the melancholy.

I particularly like this version of the song because it employs at least rudimentary vocal harmonies rather than being set as a vehicle for countertenor solo.

Lachrimae (the song to which words were later added) is sometimes presented in counterpoint form, but, sadly, not at the same time for voice. I'm just not a period purist in aspiration.

"It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal structures that create each of the voices separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony, which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. The way that is accomplished in detail is...'counterpoint'." - John Rahn