Surgery without sutures_Spoken track by Greg Bennick from Trial

Greg's introduction to the track, from the Parallax CD booklet: To have limitless potential to feel and love yet to be bound by a slowly dying body is life's greatest irony. No matter how much we can imagine the universe, we are bound by the earth, eventually by the dirt itself. Given that set of circumstances, how are we to live? How is it possible to find inspiration and confidence in the midst of a future which is already pre-determined yet entirely uncertain at the same time? A year from now I could be making love, laughing, in awe, extraordinarily happy....or I could have worms crawling in the dirt through my eye sockets, unaware that the passageway through which they move ever housed a unique and caring individual life. In the midst of such opposites, it is easy to get lost, to give up, to get wrapped up in fear and pressure and rage. It is easy to look backwards wistfully dreaming of being in complete control of what we would have done to feel more alive in the past, rather than to risk defeat and live in the present, or hope for the future. This song is about what happens at the breaking point. It is about saying yes to the fear, to the regret, to all the people you never kissed, all the places you'll never got to see, all the friends you've lost, and all the ones you hope to find. Its about what you want to feel and experience, and how much you want to squeeze every last precious moment out of life before you are extinguished forever. Its about breathing deeply, feeling and living to extremes in the midst of a slow process of dying, a process which is as painful as it is beautiful...a process that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. The track: How many seconds left?How Many years?How long remains until everything I've known,everything I've loved,anyone I've touched disappears?There will come a day when the world will never have known this face,this name,this body,this brain.Is it any surprise that sometimes I am short of breath?That I find solace in being alone?Where safe and protected with armor to deflect the world and to maintain control.I can lay quiet and restrained,immobilized by a threat that won't fade.Self-contained.Self-aware.Self-absorbed.Self-persevere.Individuate to survive than isolate.Try to stay alive at any cost.Lost and terrified.Ignoring the heart and killing the mind.Unable to find real peace inside.Tattoo this body and tear apart my brain.Diminish the strain in every possible way.It's safer to retract than act.Protect intact.Suppress reaction.Embrace inaction.Protect and defend,but still ignore the end.I lie to myself vitally.I lie to myself.It's all lies.Trying to convince myself that it's ok.That almost having everything meant that I never had anything at all,but I know my eyes reflect the truth.Every moment counts me closer to zero and I am desperate.Desperate to hold life in an embrace instead of at arms reach.I am recast and adapted by all those around me.Shifted and molded into someone and something I no longer recognize.I feel linked yet alone.Regret like ice piercing me.Convulsions from imagining what could have been.But regardless of every hand that slips away forever,I'm hoping someday to hear whispered these words in my hour of deepest pain: you are very much so alive in a way most people would never let themselves be.With every beat of this slowly dying heart.To make the choice.To be set free.To be here.To be with you.To be afraid.To be ignored.To be embraced.To be unsure.To be erased.To be touched.To be shared.To be damned.To be scared.To be shunned.To be absorbed.To be wanted.Absolved.Unloved.To be unknown.To be inescapable.To be in awe.To want it all.To have it now.To be alive.