Jasper: (spoken)
Why am I having a hard time-

Gretchen: (spoken)
Remembering? It's starting. The Forgetting. It happens in phases

(sung)
It's a process; first you die
As you fall from life to death
You fall into the Lethe
Board the ferry, pay your fare
And you think "I had a thought"
But you forgot
Just forgot

(spoken)
The first stage is the headaches

(sung)
So it starts
Small details begin to blur
'Til the person that you were seems so distant
Was that you?
As each memory erases
The photos of familiar faces
Smudge and blot
But you won't care a lot
You'll forget you forgot
(spoken)
The second stage: You start to forget others. Your friends, your parents... In the third stage you start speaking Portuguese

Jasper: (spoken)
Portuguese?

Gretchen: (spoken)
No one knows why

(sung)
Now it isn't uncommon to try to stop it
To fight for your life
Never to lose sight of your life
It's tragically normal to jot it down
To write all your life
Gripping tight to your life
You make notes in a book
So to fight the forgetting
You might keep the best things
And omit what's upsetting
But as days pass you look in your book just to find
That the book that you took serves one purpose
To remind you of all of the people
You'll never see again
For even when they come
They'll end up just as dumb
And then
(spoken)
The last stage: you forget yourself. And suddenly you feel... okay

(sung)
At last it stops
And you toss the book for trash
Or you torch the book to ash
Just like they did
Just like me
And you'll learn like other folk
That life is just a joke
A trick of glass and smoke
A dream from which you've woke