Minos' Dilemma (now I wear the horns)

from New Myths Preview (Vocal / Piano Takes) by Peter Le Couteur

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King Minos, walking through the empty labyrinth years after the slaying of the Minotaur, the departure of Ariadne, the escape of Dædalus, and the death of Icarus.

lyrics

I didn't choose to look this way. These lines, hair this grey. Oh, but anyway, these things I think of as mine.

I asked a man to build for me a playpen for my son. In the shape of a labyrinth. And then, when it was done, I built for him an ivory tower, with windows around for every hour, so the sun might shine with all his power on Dædalus and his son.

Did Dædalus mount an albatross when he fathered Icarus? I tried to keep the beast of loss locked from that cunning man.

(My offspring had his thread cut short by Theseus, his tail caught and knotted tight around his horns, hair matted into bloody points.

The red threads that Ariadne gave to spur him must've come from more cunning hands than hers. In fact, all possible paths converge; I'm sure Dædalus was that man.)

Perhaps he made the wooden cow my wife locked herself in somehow. Maybe we are all even now entangled in his plans.

I know he made three labyrinths; a wooden one to reckon with, the one where my poor horned scion lived, and one inside my crown.

I walk the wooden walls alone, and remember with every stone the prisons we make of our homes, the labyrinths of lives.

I didn't choose to end this way; these lines, the things I say, these are just a part I play until the music dies.

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from New Myths Preview (Vocal / Piano Takes), released February 9, 2012

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Peter Le Couteur London, UK

The illegitimate lovechild of Tori Amos and Tom Waits, raised in secret at an English boarding school on a diet of Irish folk, blues, and comparative mythology.

After eight years of faffing, and finally finishing Seven New Myths in Prague with the help of the expat indie scene there, PLC is back in London singing in bars, and doing a PhD at the Royal College of Art about imaginary museums. ... more

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