This song is part of a larger story that I can tell will take a long time to unfold in its entirety.

Over a year ago, I started a chaotic document of notes on the subject of violets, a flower that has long since enchanted me.

The reason I started this document is because I learned about the chemical compound that gives violets their distinctive smell. This compound is called ionone, and it plays a sort of game of hide and seek with your smell receptors, repeatedly appearing and vanishing due to its flooding of said receptors; the scent disappears once the receptors are flooded, and you smell it again once the receptors clear. Roses are another flower with this chemical compound.

I found this idea super inspiring, as I have long since felt that violets have a sort of mystical quality, something almost in between worlds; they’re there, but not quite there. As such, all of the lyrics to this song refer to the liminal.

That all being said, the violets featured in this video are called viola sororia, also called the "common blue violet," which are a variety of violet that don’t have a smell at all. But I can pretend! As a kid, I’m pretty sure I thought the floral scents that drifted in through the evening windows were these violets – in reality they were something else. Maybe the violets were playing a trick on me, wanting me to believe that it was them – you never know. ;)

To that point: Another thing that came to me in all my contemplation of violets is a re-write of the popular lore that violets symbolize shyness, e.g. the “shrinking violet.” My rewritten lore goes like this: Violets contain ionone, which plays hide and seek. So it’s a myth that violets are shy; what is mistaken for shyness is actually mischievousness.

Lyrics:

perfume like a dream
appearing and vanishing
takes hold of me in the springtime breeze
like honeysuckle wrapping 'round my knees

a record skipping,
needle woolgathering:
planchette to ouiji and i'm flowerpicking
just like persephone

a butterfly at feed on violet candies
houdini feats the illusion of a dream
ephemeral sweet a dream beyond reach
a thousand little deaths at my feet

a door with a secret key
that leads to nothing
staircase to ceiling or no balcony
and you're falling, falling, falling

far beyond belief
where lightning strikes twice and starlight speaks
egypt myth and alchemy
in my celestial sleep

a butterfly at feed on violet candies
houdini feats the illusion of a dream
ephemeral sweet a dream beyond reach
a thousand little deaths at my feet
they call to me

so find me wandering
like a bloom to moonbeams
to the crossing where i give my life to me
hecate hecate triple spiraling

now i'm dancing like the trees
that bend the window breeze
as a top-40 CD
rots in time perfectly
now i see

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