This is the most famous of all of Thringe‘s songs, her ultimate cry of defiance and loss at the forces that shaped andro life into its brief, intense form. The melodies changed almost nightly in performance, but the lyrics became stamped in the minds of all who heard them, and rarely changed at all, unless Thringe (as she liked to do) threw in some topical material from time to time.

The word ‘love’ does not appear in this song. Neither does the word ‘hate’.

The song’s usual pace was one overvoice word every two seconds, and one undervoice line in the same interval. Imagine a bass pulse on each overvoice word; then lay in six melody beats on each undervoice line (five, plus one between lines), played in permutation style, so that a note sequence AAAAC for one line might be followed by AAABC, and so forth.

Overvoice:

Blink born eye wide face clamped Blink bang eye shut face slapped Blink bash heart float space mapped Blink bond heart touch twin cramped	Blink door voice boom mind canned Blink dare death taste clock hand Blink death shock haste skin rind Blink door slam eye cast blind
Blink gush dry heave world bled Blink grieve dry heart home shed Blink gash heart slave roam dread Blink grave yawn sex whirl dead	Blink door slam scream mind gone Blink door slam door slam dawn Blink door slam mind stop run Blink door slam blink life done
Blink door space run fly cry Blink dark face race mind high Blink dash blink zoom stab sigh Blink door slam tomb slab dry	Blink door slam life run run Blink door slam life life done Blink door slam life run run Blink door slam life life done

Undervoice:

(Clock is turning on
clock is turning on
clock is flying fast
numbers flicker past
blood is flowing hot
clock is tying knot
voices, colors cry
inner spaces fly…)

The undervoice is repeated throughout, woven into the overvoice in different ways. Here is an example:

Blink Clock is turning on born clock is turning on eye clock is flying fast wide numbers flicker past face blood is flowing hot clamped clock is tying knot Blink voices, colors cry shut inner spaces fly

bang Clock is turning on eye clock is turning on face clock is flying fast slapped numbers flicker past Blink blood is flowing hot bash clock is tying knot heart voices, colors cry float inner spaces fly

space Clock is turning on mapped clock is turning on Blink clock is flying fast bond numbers flicker past heart blood is flowing hot touch clock is tying knot twin voices, colors cry cramped inner spaces fly

This shows an example of Thringe‘s favorite counterpointing tricks, putting eight lines against six words, one word per line, so that the twenty-four words of each four-line stanza resynchronize with the start of the eight lines again. In her concerts, she sometimes used inter-stanza breaks to throw the two voices off-sync, so that a much larger cycle of repetitions was needed to bring them back together again for a matched cycle.

Her imitators usually steered clear of these complexities, so that each inter-line break in Clock would get the last two lines of the eight-line counterpoint, letting the whole thing restart after each four-line verse.

Thringe (and Lejina-Thringe after her) loved to take the tempo of this song from the slowest pulse of the sandrukha up to a shattergun near-anjive screech, with the percussionists slamming the verse-words while the singers all took the undervoice line at top speed. The group had an eerie ability to switch abruptly from the top-volume ensemble sound into a single near-whispered vocal line with only a thrumming panpan behind her, and then back again, without losing a beat, scrambling a word, or missing a line.

In the small clubs Thringe counterpointed herself in song, using her andro voice extensions to sing four lines at once in round, a rare treat, while the andros in the audience shouted the verse words back at her. This practice often got her in trouble with the CIB, since she usually forgot to cover her tracks by keeping a voice synthesizer handy.