For those who aren't aware I was inspired to write a song I ended up titling, "Jurassick Dark" about halfway through the process of creating what you see and hear today.
The original Jurassic Park movie blew me away as a kid. I still own the VHS that I watched every weekend for months back in 1993. It made me want to become a paleontologist at age 13 until I soon realized my pale-skinned, skinny self wouldn't survive even 15 min in the desert.
I'm very proud of the song and what it stands for, especially in light of where I'm at with the JP code today, so I figured it's about time I flat out share the lyrics in a post.
The song started with the intention to describe the premise of the film but soon evolved into me researching a rabbit hole of fossil controversy, a dissertation of religious beliefs and what it means to be human in my mind's eye. I hope at least some of it resonates with you.
You can listen to the track here: https://timstiles.bandcamp.com/track/jurassick-dark
But for those who like to read, here are the lyrics.
Lyrics:
[Ian Malcolm: Genetic power's the most awesome force the planet's ever seen but you wield it like a kid who's found his dad's gun.]
[Dr. Grant: The world's just changed so radically and we're all... running to catch up.]
Before we appeared
Its evolution crafted
Extraordinary creatures
We couldn’t even imagine
Phylums fantastic
Appetites gigantic
Bird-like lizards
With a surprising advantage
Survival of the fittest
Brought an age of massives
Cretaceous synapsis
Through days Jurassic
And in those days
Giant tree limbs snapped with
A slow moving stream
Made of sap which…
Encased proboscis suckers
Blood residing thoracic
As amber preserved
Dee-oxy-ribo-nucleic acid
Which stayed safe
For millennia like
Current day plastics
Until we arrived to extract it…
With lasik-like precision,
Visions of reliving the past,
Advents in cryogenics
The first egg hatched
It took the world by surprise
How could time's passage
All of a sudden become elastic?
[Ellie Sattler: Where do you get 100 million year old dinosaur blood?]
[John Hammond: It's all part of the miracle of cloning.]
[Mr. DNA: Bingo! Dino DNA!]
--CHORUS--
They say rage is primal
But we’re just tiny mammals
When it comes to the wars we wage
Beliefs are motifs
Until their waves become tidal
Drowning all in glorious ways
DNA spun a vital
Double-helix recital
Millenniums before we reigned
History is suicidal
If man remains its rival
We'll all go extinct
Like the dinosaur age
[Dr. Grant: We're out of a job | Ian Malcolm: Don't you mean extinct?]
Evangelicals say
Earth was created in 7 days
But their literature
Has no pictorial proof
Saying God created dinosaurs
But considered them corrupted
So he killed off
That phantasmagorical OOPS!
I guess the Garden of Eden
Had no regard for the heathens
It wouldn't dare let in
Such gargantuan, great groups
Adam must've thwarted behemoths
From reaching the gate
While Jesus guarded Eve
From that garden snake's tooth
Disregard for discoveries made
In the midwest plains
Turns the real dino story dissolute
Some are so ridiculously in the dark
They think brachiosaurs fit on the ark
That doesn't float
In the primordial soup
Evolution's not a theory
Creationism's an illusion
The 'Good Book's editorial pursuit
Bible thumpers keep trumping along
With such assumptions
Which couldn't carry the weight
Of a T-Rex foot
[Ian Malcolm: You didn't earn the knowledge for yourself so... you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could. And before you even knew what you had you patented it, and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunch box. And now you're selling it! You want to sell it!]
(Chorus x1)
[Dr. Grant: Dinosaurs and man... Two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been thrown back into the mix together.]
Look I know its a lot of time to digest
No way we could know
The entirety of what life did exist
All we can do is turn stones
And describe what’s left
Study footprints and bones
Surmising the rest
I just think claims
Of supersized humans
Are kind of a stretch…
[Ray Arnold: PLEASE!?]
Assuming dino's lived beside man
In (the book of) Genesis
Is the wildest guess…
[Ellie Sattler: They have no idea what century they're in]
It was one thing for Cope
To put an Elasmosaurus skull
On its tail instead of its neck….
But quite another to claim
They were human giants
A union of God's sons
And the daughters of men
Pencils up class,
It's time to reflect
Imagination's beneficial
And we're trying our best
But bone wars keep
Breaking ties that bind and protect
Our own existence
Which consists of the tiniest speck
So, when you think of the past
Show a little respect
Five mass extinctions,
At the brink of the next
What have we learned?
Life on earth’s been kind of a mess
I say lets keep gathering facts
For what little time we have left...
[Ian Malcolm: I'm simply saying uh..]
Abolish history’s abominable text and
Quit pretending we’re an indomitable Rex
[Ian Malcolm: ...finds a way...]
Melbourne
Milwaukee, WI
Mansfield
