Name: It Doesn't Add Up
Duration: P00H03M19S
Description: I wrote this poem years ago and revisited it recently when I began this math-focused album. I love the idea of a good paradox in the universe. But none of us enjoys a paradox in our own lives. This difference intrigued me and became the inspiration for the poem.

It Doesn't Add Up

from AlgoRhythms by Iambic Beats

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about

I wrote this poem years ago and revisited it recently when I began this math-focused album. I love the idea of a good paradox in the universe. But none of us enjoys a paradox in our own lives. This difference intrigued me and became the inspiration for the poem.

lyrics

(Mathematics is a deductive science)

They teach paradoxes
But only in the theoretical
Look, they say
A feline in a box
An experiment of slits
It doesn’t add up
Let us think on
What this teaches us
They say

But they've forgotten
All the flesh and nerve endings
They've forgotten
That where a mind finds whimsy
A belly can ache

Proofs and
Logic gates bridle
A wild, ischemic heart
Flailing to resuscitate
Amidst barbed wire
Of your freshly sharpened words

And still

I cannot solve
Cannot reconcile
Why all at once I hold
The anger of a stampede
And the wilt of an empty room

(The proof is defective
It would be better to dispense with argument altogether
Rather than bring fallacy to the rescue of common sense)

credits

from AlgoRhythms, released July 23, 2021
The sections in the lyrics in parentheses are from an audiobook reading of chapter 14 of Bertrand Russell's "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy," courtesy of Libravox.org, a source of public domain audio.

license

about

Iambic Beats Los Angeles, California

We have so many titles. A few of mine are: scientist, poet, writer, singer, mom. I like to think I live at the intersection of music and words and always asking questions. A goddamn lovely place to be.