All the Spells are Broken – Notes and Lyrics

 

There have always been people who gain fame and fortune through deception and by claiming “secret knowledge,” whether from some esoteric source or God himself. I was thinking about one of the parallels in history related to this.

The first verse is about Katterfelto, a magician during a pandemic in late-1700s England. In addition to magic tricks, he also displayed a “solar telescope” a device that used sunlight to magnify small objects. He would show the small living creatures present in pond water, claiming this was the cause of the disease causing the pandemic. Fortunately, he also sold a “cure.”

The opening lines of the song paraphrase the poet Cowper, who mentions Katterfelto in his poem The Task:

    Katterfelto, with his hair on end
    At his own wonders, wond’ring for his bread

You can read more about Katterfelto here. 

The second verse is about the present day hoax perpetrated by Q-anon and its adherents, also during a pandemic. By several accounts, the entire Q following arose because one or two people just wanted to see what would happen if they started spreading lies online, claiming inside information and divine inspiration. (I was just playing / To see what I could build / Fascinated / By the moving parts). It has attracted an untold number of people, affected politics, resulted in sickness and death, torn families apart, and ruined lives.

LYRICS

I was wandering
With my hair on end
At my own wonders
Wondering for my bread
I told them
Believing is seeing
And they held on to every word I said
Yeah they held on to every word I said
I told them what I saw when I magnified the sun
But I couldn’t show the proof to anyone
But I couldn’t show the proof to anyone

But the whole world is solid, all the way through
You kill the clockwork when you break the toy in two
It doesn’t take magic or mystery to be enthralled
All the spells are broken, or never worked at all
All the spells are broken, or never worked at all

I was just playing
To see what I could build
Fascinated
By the moving parts
I told them
There is a hidden world
And they believed me with all their hearts
Yeah they believed me with all their hearts
I told them I had wisdom, granted from on high
And they never stopped to think that I would lie
And they never stopped to think that I would lie

But the whole world is solid, all the way through
You kill the clockwork when you break the toy in two
It doesn’t take magic or mystery to be enthralled
All the spells are broken, or never worked at all
All the spells are broken, or never worked at all
All the spells are broken, or never worked at all

TECHNICAL

Ovation Celebrity acoustic-electric guitar; Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, MXR Super Badass distortion pedal, Vox Cambridge modeling amp in AC30 mode, recorded with Sennheiser e609 microphone; Korg Minilogue synthesizer/midi keyboard input; drum programming in Logic Pro; vocals recorded with Audio Technica 2035 microphone.