From a distance, you can hear the brass and the drums as they get closer
And it begins as a sound
It’s very interesting, it begins as a sound
And as it gets louder, there comes a point
Where imperceptibly, it becomes visible
And then, all I can say is, it gets bigger
Just like someone marching toward you through three-dimensional space
(Ma – Marching toward you through three-dimensional space)
And so, it goes from being a little phenomenon on the horizon of your awareness
To, you're there, you're with them
You're playing the tuba, you're marching along
It's happening
It's happening
And then, they peel off and march away and leave you in the same way they came
The archetype of this phenomenon, as far as I can tell is the archetype of the circus

[Chorus]
The circus
DMT is, somehow
The cosmic circus
The circus
The circus
The cosmic circus

And if you analyze what the circus is
It's a closed environment
Of permitted outrageousness
That roves the straight landscape
Setting up in one town and then another, and then another
And it's a thing of wonder and light
And carny people are loose
They're not like you and me
I remember in the little town I grew up in
Every 4th of July
The carnival would come to town for Cherry Day
We kids were told we couldn't stay out after nine o'clock
When the carnival was in town because there was just this aura
More liquor was being consumed, more people were staying up late, so forth and so on
And if you analyze the circus it has all the elements of the DMT thing
I mean, there's the center ring, the clowns
Like Henry Munn in a wonderful essay on Psilocybin mushrooms
Called "The Mushrooms of Language"
Describes them as self-performing acrobatic bits of grammar
This is clearly the same thing
Thing
[Chorus]
The circus
The circus
DMT is, somehow
The cosmic circus
The circus
The circus
The cosmic circus

It's a wonderful place for children
But it has, behind that, a dark side
My own earliest reminiscence of what I could call erotic awareness
I must have been very, very young
Under three, because I was being held by people
And I was taken to a circus
And there was a woman there in a tiny G-string costume
Spinning, hanging by her teeth, up near the sun
And it was all there
And it was all there
And it was all there
Death and Eros and risk and drama
And, you know, I got it (I got it)
So, there's all that in the circus
But then, there's also the wiggy side
You know, bearded lady, the goat-faced boy
The thing in the bottle, that's
[Chorus]
The circus
The circus
DMT is, somehow
The cosmic circus
The circus
The circus
The cosmic circus

It's all just the main event
And then the circus packs up and leaves
And everything is the same
Except there's some paper blowing around that moves
And every little boy and girl qould themselves attempt to run off and join the circus
So, this is the archetype of - of DMT
Completely self-contained, transformative - ah - world
Filled with all kinds of implications