About the Songs: Hadi Pakzad's Notes

Hadi Pakzad wrote notes on several of his songs; five of the notes below are dated May 2009 and the note on “Death Angel” 14 March 2010. Hadi Pakzad's official Telegram channel published them between July 2016 and August 2017. Translated from the Persian originals.

On the Song “There's Nothing”

From the album Doctor · published on the Telegram channel: 16 August 2017

Do you believe in the butterfly effect? It says all events in the world affect one another; even when a butterfly flaps its wings in some corner of the world, that motion affects the whole world; in other words, the world is always being affected by you or affecting you, and in short, it never leaves you alone. If at some point in your life you have felt that "there's nothing" and shared it with someone, you were probably told that you are depressed or ill, or at least they tried to talk you out of that state, or pull you out some other way. In my view, the most beautiful feeling in the world is that very feeling of "there's nothing"; because the reason for this "there's nothing" is that the world has let go of you for a moment, and since it neither wants any effect nor leaves any, you feel something different, a little like emptiness; but this emptiness is nothing but the detachment of the mystics, given to us as a gift for a short while; in these moments, experience true happiness.

Listen to "There's Nothing"; maybe there really is nothing.

Hadi Pakzad, May 2009

On the Song “Book”

From the album Doctor · published on the Telegram channel: 28 November 2016

They say everything in the world has awareness; even objects, even numbers, are busy living a kind of life: objects in the body of physics, numbers in the body of meaning, and words and sentences in the body of concept; each and every one of them lives.

Some time ago, experiments were done on containers of water: they photograph the structure of the water molecules in a container, write a word on the container and set it aside for a while, then photograph the molecular structure of the water again; and you will be amazed to learn that the structure of the water changes according to the meaning of the word.

You can try simpler versions of these experiments without any equipment.

Truly, if a single negative word has such a deep and fundamental effect on lifeless, soulless water, what effect do all the complexes and bitter words stored in my mind and heart have on the foundation of me, a human and a living being? Don't they tear me apart from within? Are all the words I never said waiting for me to collapse? And all the moments I kept silent so that my thoughts would stay locked up, don't they want me to break so they can escape this prison? Am I looking for a destination more desirable than peace? And is that why I need more than one answer to this one question? Isn't this answer inside me? How can this one and only answer be written in so many books? I am only one person! How do the white books read me better than I do? And how do the black books know me better than I know myself? And when, full of these thoughts and words, I go to my golden bed, my heart is not in me; there is no room left for it in this crowd, and it is a homeless bench-sleeper.

I am a book, a dozen books; you are a book; we are books that were never read; we have not even read ourselves. Read yourself, know your longing, and for a moment, just one moment, sleep beside me.

Listen to "Book" in a civilization as hollow as books, a civilization as old as mankind's first invention.

Hadi Pakzad, May 2009

This note as a PDF (in Persian)

On the Song “Doctor”

From the album Doctor · published on the Telegram channel: 8 September 2016

(Doctor, angel, mother, a cold-water foot bath)

And a thin dagger in the hand of an angel dressed in white, whose gaze is nothing like an angel's; in the burning depth of a grave-like hollow, through whose small window you can see a few people talking anxiously, and a child with so much poison of indifference in his blood that he understands how dolls feel; but the pain is a nightmare, for the angel's dagger goes in and once again presses every storybook into the wooden fibres of the doll's body.

And the doll drowns in the world of sea stories and, carried by the waves, reaches the wildness of the whales; when it comes to, there is no ship, and nothing as far as the eye can see but the dark blue of the water.

And the prince who had taken a bride the night before was lost in the blizzard as the ship went down, and only now and then does the cold of the water touch the soles of his feet; as if he were the ruler of the seas, standing on a whale's back to command the winds, when suddenly the whale-like monster of the storybook throws him into the water, and the child's body shivers on the pillow, and so does the mother's heart.

And the father, behind a calm face, cries out his pleading to the angel in white.

And I find myself in the belly of a whale, with the fish of the sea as my cellmates.

And I scream: I am not a fish!

And the angel: another dagger!

And I grew calm again, as if I were a fish.

And the angel told the mother that everything is normal, normal!

And angels and daggers kept coming, and the wooden doll knew it did not matter at all if it was a fish.

Hadi Pakzad, May 2009

This note as a PDF (in Persian)

On the Song “What About Me?”

From the album Aflatoon · published on the Telegram channel: 14 September 2016

When limits and borders were being defined in the world, rights also began to be defined for human beings; the custom behind all these definitions, of course, rested on that same morality of the Platos, which little by little took the form of contracts. A share is the share of that part of the world we have the means and the freedom to reach; so what is the difference between a share and a right? A right is set by custom, but a share by one's own conscience. Say you want to use something of a friend's that was left with you for safekeeping, in a way he doesn't know about; obviously most people would not consider this legitimate; yet a certainty inside you finds nothing wrong with it, and you don't even feel guilty; so this use is not your right, but it is your share.

When I was younger I had learned that if someone crossed my limits and borders I could tell them: you have no right. But later I myself crossed other people's limits many times, and many times I heard them tell me: you have no right. But who truly knows what we really deserve? Who better than ourselves? Well, there is nothing new in this; in a way it is the shared experience of all of us, and every day some of everyone's right becomes part of someone else's share.

But listen to the song "What About Me?" when your right becomes part of the share of the person dearest to you.

Hadi Pakzad, May 2009

This note as a PDF (in Persian)

On the Song “Death Angel”

From the album Aflatoon · published on the Telegram channel: 3 July 2016

Years after Einstein became famous for putting forward relativity, whose accuracy was recently confirmed in an experiment using atomic clocks, two of his brilliant students, Heisenberg and Bohr, put forward the two principles of uncertainty and complementarity; today quantum physics uses these two principles to explain many metaphysical events that had no scientific explanation before. In an example about these two principles I read that since the existence of any being requires at least one perceiving being, it is possible that when we are not paying attention to an object, that object does not exist at all. I remembered that as a child I was suspicious of clocks, and sometimes, to catch them off guard, I would suddenly look at them, hoping to see them resting while I wasn't looking; and today I read that when I'm not looking, they don't exist at all. They say that when Einstein's student revealed these things to him, Einstein walked all night until morning,

and in the morning he said: I would rather it weren't so, because I don't want to believe that God plays backgammon with us.

Hadi Pakzad, 14 March 2010

On the Song “Earth”

From the album Aflatoon · published on the Telegram channel: 5 December 2016

In the land of the sun, the custom was that any piece that grew red-hot enough was cast out by the others and flung to some distant point in space; after that, life far away, in the cold shadows of space, would bring the piece to growth and maturity until it became fit to be a mother. When the Earth, full of fire and pride, fell far from its land, and in the cold, the dark and the loneliness gave up its arrogance and set itself to cooling, it decided to become a mother and a cradle for living things; so it raised its hands in prayer and called on God. God said: I will send down upon you creatures called humans, and for their living I will create fruits, and I will give you a gravity to keep them close to you; but you will not be safe from these creatures, who are not safe even from their own cleverness and intelligence. The Earth, badly frightened, said: Then what is to be done, O Lord? And God said: I will tell you a secret about these creatures; knowing it, you will keep them captive and busy with you forever; but fear the day this secret is revealed to them, for that day they will take flight and conquer the galaxies, and no power will be able to stand against them. God whispered the secret into the Earth's ear and left. It began to rain; the Earth turned green; the seas began to flow; and time passed and passed, and the Earth ruled the humans with that secret, and many humans were born and died, and every day the Earth kept many humans busy crying and others busy laughing, and it never saw a human free of these two. So it praised God and said: O Lord, when will a human come who is free of crying, who will know our secret and be freed before death?

When will he come?

Hadi Pakzad, May 2009

This note as a PDF (in Persian)