Not a Robot, But a Ghost...

is the title of a song on the album Noble Beast, by Andrew Bird. I can say with certainty, from my own diminutive and humble personal perspective, that this song is the greatest song I have ever heard. Nothing has ever spoken to me or defined my life so perfectly, so efficiently, or so profoundly as this song just did with its succinct five and a half minutes. I'm not one to pay attention to lyrics, most often these words to me exist wholly separate from their meaning as instead an additional instrument, but the instrument I'm speaking of is not the voice as one might expect. Instead, it is a sort of dreamlike sensation of the words abstracted, stripped of context and intention, rearranged into an entirely new personalized meaning; in other words, instead of trying to understand what the artist is trying to communicate, I focus on understanding what the music makes me feel. With that in mind, here's a portion of the lyrics:

I run the numbers through the floor
here's how it goes: I crack the codes
I crack the codes that end the war
I crack the codes that end the war

I pushed a note under your door
here's how it goes: things come to blows
but we don't want this anymore
No we don't want this anymore
We don't want this anymore

I crack the codes, you end the war

I hear the clockwork in your core
time strips the gears till you forget what they were for
I push the numbers through your pores
I crack the codes
I crack the codes that end the war

I think life is the most beautiful thing, that earth is the most amazing planet, and that reality is a mind bending paradox of a glory far beyond what is conceivable. Often enough I realize that I don't know anything relative to the amount there is knowable, but if I know one thing more than any else it is that I am incredibly grateful for every single moment I spend in this impossibly magnificent phenomenon called existence. No matter what happens to me or where I go in life I will always be ecstatic just knowing that I have been alive. Just the same, I will always do my best to give more than I am given; to have been given anything at all seems an impossibly tremendous favor to recompense.