SimonSays: Let Me Live

Walk a mile in my shoes; feel the pull of unseen strings and the pressure to dance to another’s rhythm. Look up at the shining tower we are told to climb, with no promise of ever reaching the top. Let dreams and memories blur, confuse survival with salvation, and dissect the minds behind false smiles.

And finally-

let me live.

Track List

1. Let Me Live

2. The Great Golden Tower

3. Descent

4. No Tales To Tell

5. Sanctuary

6. A Simple Smile

The Initial Project

As a part of my final year of university, I designed myself a research task module dedicated to creative writing and electronic music. This spoken word project was rooted in dreams - a fascinating topic which I have always found alluring and evocative. The unreleased material consists of a handful of lengthy electronic tracks comprised of surreal spoken word passages littered with experimental creative writing techniques.

Whilst I had a lot of fun creating this project, the finished material was as raw as the subject matter was inane. I shelved the project, and further creative writing endeavours, for years before visiting any sort of writing again.

Presently, I find myself in an emotionally grounded state where I am able to not only talk about my mental health journey, but turn it into art. I began to write poetry - Let Me Live being the first to materialise. I created an initial audio sketch and recorded the spoken word piece but, again, found it too raw to release.

No Tales to Tell was completed soon after: Initially designed to be an album opener for the inane dreamscape projects that I hoped to polish and release. As I delved deeper into creative writing and poetry, a story developed signposting specific personal experiences. Let Me Live became the result of consolidating these works into a single, cohesive anthology—a linear journey through reflection, struggle, and personal growth shaped by my experiences with mental health.

The six tracks explore different mental states I had before, during and after hitting rock bottom. Let Me Live explores my perceived lack of autonomy in a world that feels predetermined. The Great Golden Tower broadly examines the western society I am accustomed to, and many of its flaws that affect people at an individual level, despite being unable to change through a single individual’s endeavours. Descent explores the societal pressure to find success and be ambitious as well as quietly accepting failure to do so.

No Tales To Tell sheds light in the world of the subconscious and unconscious. Sanctuary is rooted in the experience of waking up from a slumber you never intended to wake from. And A Simple Smile reminds us that everyone hides away to a certain extent.

Let Me Live

A puppeteer's strings cut into my wrists like a hanged man's noose made of thorns.
My ankles suspended; my toes barely reaching solid ground.
My extremities twisted in service of a dance I could never learn.
'let me live' I cry, 'leave me be'

A clock - tick tock - in the middle of a class - tick tock
Too fast? - Tick tock - and it gets pulled back -tick tock
Too slow? Tick tock - it is rushed and harassed
'Time will pass' tick tock,' will you?'

You see, faulty cogs get removed from the machine; no one wants to play with broken toys. Without love and time it's often easier to replace than to find the best fit.
I was built for wonder, not for function, yet I am forced to be a part of a grand elegant design that does not give me room to spread my wings.

I do not fit, I do not serve, and yet—I am here.
Breathing and pleading for creature comforts I so rightly deserve.
A script not my own, a story not mine—
yet they call it fate, and expect me to shine
I am not a cog, nor a puppet, nor a clock without a sprocket. not a creature to be trained nor a toy to be fixed. not a dancer out of time nor a bird to be clipped.

Let me wander, let me break, let me dream, let me create, let me decorate accordingly let me learn from my mistakes

let me use my limited autonomy

let me find joy in my monotony

let me be

and let me live

The Great Golden Tower

Standing proud, the great golden tower
reflects beams of hate from the sun of sour
refracting light in hues of rainbow
Inspiring plight in pews below

The people, blissfully unaware of the smoke and mirrors
Line the streets and the pockets of adjacent killers.
They embrace the colours in the sky
And use them to fuel their comforting lie

They idealise those who flaunt Aristocracy
Yet resent true crowns with contempt and hypocrisy
Disregard the monarchs replaced by false kings
Hoarding like dragons with too many nice things

Award our children with hateful tongues
And deny the filth they put in our lungs
Accuse the afflicted for a lack of consent
Whilst they lie, steal, sin, but repent

Burn the books and trial the old
Rewrite the myths the young are told
refuse the starving a lonely cent
Despite them living an eternal Lent

Silence crawls within gilded halls
An air perpetuated by reinforced walls
Defend the great golden tower
Let it hoard thy wealth and thy power

Descent

The earning to be taken in for simply being myself
To reach a vista in the great golden tower
on the back of my own merit
No handouts, no help

And yet that is what I need.
To find a foothold in this ladder to ascension
On which rungs pace anxiously
and rest only on a whim

The goal is always moving; forever out of reach.
Disregard your personal growth
As there is always someone else
Placed on a pedestal from birth

I may not have fought for my place at this table
But I can see we are all malnourished
carcasses as empty as the bread is stale
But the charitable cake? Plentiful.

How dare I want better
To exist above mediocrity
Teetering between comfort
and want no more

So I put on my mask and embrace the marionette’s strings
And stiffly march towards a life of luxury
Only to be turned away
for a lack of authenticity

I will never reach the golden gates,
let alone the penthouse
Not as I am
Nor as I will ever be

I loosen my grip on this perilous ascent
And let gravity take its hold
Fold into the depths for the descent forgives
Indulge in the dark and the cold

No Tales To Tell

A bizarre, vivid world awaits behind one’s closed eyes.

They may flutter in discomfort

or stir in arousal -

but hold them tight as to not disturb this fleeting plane.

Conscious unconsciousness:

the favoured state of the dreamers:

a state adjacent to the present where the future and the past collide.

For the lucids, this world is an oyster -

a perfect gleaming marble brimming with possibilities.

For the rest of the dreamers, however,

this world is a prison,

simultaneously sadistic and masochistic in nature.

In this miniature dimension,

where the sky is anything but blue,

face awkward past mistakes.

Be challenged by imagined futures.

And confront the mirror of the psyche.

Anger,

embarrassment,

regret.

The proof of growth from one’s past self.

Be ashamed of one’s youth.

Wince in pain as fists are balled in simmering rage.

Bitter sweet joy,

Bliss

and euphoria.

Serenely reminisce in one’s comforting fantasies.

Sink into your softest memories;

wrap yourself in warm illusion.

Passion,

lust

and envy

often raise their heads to a specter of an ex lover

while worry,

anxiety

and fear

raise theirs to premonitions not yet realised.

Whatever is on the mind, embrace it.

Be cradled in these feelings with no attempt to loosen their grip -

their hold preventing an abyssal transit -

only to be suddenly dropped and lurched unconsciously conscious:

Be a passenger in a sweat drenched flesh cocoon, notice things in the corner of the room. Figures shift. Eyes linger. Demons salivate.

Curtains quiver in an otherwise still chamber.

Immerse yourself in panic as paralysis sets in.

Struggle to twitch- but only an inch- as to not disturb what may be lurking.

Alarm bells ring.

Beams spear for open eyes.

The sandman’s clouds dissipate.

A kaleidoscope of vapour and dust shatters.

The mind cleansed - purged.

The journey complete:

a drift through the void only to wake up in sanctuary with no tales to tell.

Sanctuary

Groggy.

a pure sharp sound cuts through the mists
Still.

Muffled footsteps shuffle in the distance
Numb.

Surrounded by thin sheets and hollow comforts
Trapped.

Something anchors beneath the flesh

Bask in the light but feel no warmth
Inhale a sterile air
Listen to the cacophony, the buzz, the swarm
taste the remnants of death itself

I nurse the courage to open my eyes
Take a glimpse of my new reality
Shifting sheets and spectral shadows
Obscured by fluorescent light

I wished for divinity or the abyss
to sail the seas fed by the Styx
to eternally traverse the astral plane
Or to wake up to learn it was all just a dream

Instead my fire is refuelled by bitterness
and hate to anonymous saints
In their acts of self righteous selflessness
And their selfish desire to keep me here;

Groggy.

beaten down by life’s racket
Still.

Paralysed beneath another’s power.
Numb.

emotions beyond comprehension
Trapped.

Anchored beneath my flesh

You should have let me rise above the clouds
After spiralling down below the ground.
Now these feelings of failure will haunt us forever

A Simple Smile

All I can hope
is that the world won’t look beyond my smile—
a carefully distilled guise,
almost certainly on trial.

Tickled and tested,
always under scrutiny,
my smile remains strong
despite my mind’s mutiny.

My face—
a placid wasteland of positivity.
My eyes—
safe, without lingering.
My voice—
sickly and gentle,
like syrup—
spouting pre-rehearsed sweet nothings.

But then there’s my brain—
a vat of primordial soup,
about ready to burst.
My thoughts—
like burnt treacle,
congealing and clotting to distaste.
My body—
ready to snap,
always plotting to betray my precise portrayal.

Scanning a sea of expertly crafted expressions,
I notice another vacant smile.
I look through, with intrigue,
to a vessel commandeered by juvenile impulse.

Their smile—
not as worn,
not as perfected.
Their eyes—
lingering, untrained.
Their fakeness—
wanting.

Have we fallen
for each other’s counterfeit selves?

Latent but primal,
a foreign feeling emerges from the depths—
an elixir laced with desire,
bubbling free.

An aether of intoxicating fantasies
floods my head,
showing visions of what could be.

My viscera—now a mire—
knots and congeals in turmoil,
while my body, a plastic husk,
remains anchored in reality.

Yet beneath this rigidity,
something tender writhes:
a pulse that dares to feel—

vulnerable authenticity—
something we both hide,
behind our simple smiles.