Reprogram The Gene

'Reprogram the gene'
DNA can be edited through genetic engineering. The most common way of achieving this is via the CRISPR gene editing technique. This uses a modified version of an antiviral defence system known as CRISPR-Cas9 together with a synthetic RNA guide into a living cell. This enables a gene to be cut at desired locations and new sequences to be inserted, or old ones removed.

'I want to be Dr. Frankenstein'
Dr Victor Frankenstein was the main character in Mary Shelley's 1818 gothic horror novel Frankestein; or The Modern Prometheus. The story tells how Doctor Frankenstein creates life from non-living matter. The original novel, in which the reader develops considerable empathy for the creature, is probably better known from the many movie adaptations in which the creature is a typically a mixture of crudely stitched parts from corpses.

'I seen the future, it ain’t orange, it's green'
'The future's bright, the future's Orange' was an advertising slogan used by the mobile phone & internet provider Orange upon its launch in the UK in 1994. Initially scorned for failing to having anything to do with technology, the slogan achieved high recognition from the public and remained in use until 2007. Orange itself was merged with T-Mobile UK to form EE in 2010, though the Orange brand continued in reduced form until 2015.

While 'green' clearly refers to environmentalism, known as the 'green movement', it was suggested that 'orange' might also refer to a certain Tango-faced ex-President of the United States that had a less than exemplary record on environmental issues. Unfortunately, I didn't note who had made this observation; if it was you, please let me know!

'Listening to Greta T'
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist, born in  2003, who initially came to prominence at the age of 15 for organising a strike by Swedish school children against climate change. This led to her being invited to address the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the strikes spread globally, involving more than a million students. In 2019, she sailed to New York for the United Nations Climate Action Summit where she delivered a highly-pointed and effective rebuke to the world's leaders for their failure to engage seriously with the issues of climate change, colloquially known as the 'How Dare You?' speech.

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

Attracting both considerable acclaim and a substantial volume of abuse (often misogynistic), Thunberg continues to campaign on environmental issues.

'Begins with a letter C'
COVID-19, often abbreviated to C19, the contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Some commentators below have suggested the letter C refers to the climate. 

'The Cure is the Disease'
A corruption of the common idiom 'the cure is worse than the disease', meaning that the proposed remedy for a medical condition ultimately has worse outcomes that the condition itself.

'I don’t wanna cough'
In addition to the fact that a new, continuous cough is a major symptom of COVID-19 (along with a high temperature, and a loss or change to the sense of smell or taste), the expression 'to cough' is also an euphemism for dying.

'You can turn up the gain on the pain'
Electric instruments such as a guitar send a weak electrical signal to an amplifier, where it is processed in a pre-amp to increase the amplitude of the signal. Until it reaches a certain point, known as the Clean Headroom Limit, gain simply boosts the volume of the signal being passed to the part of the amp that outputs the signal, but boosted beyond that point, gain introduces distortion into the signal by clipping the top and bottom of it, resulting in what you might call a 'dirty' tone. 

'The spore's already on the breeze, We get what we deserve'
A callback to the chorus of Deserve on Marillion.com.

'Locked down, Knocked Down, Country in Tiers'
While the expression 'lockdown' was used widely throughout the English-speaking world to refer to the legal prohibitions imposed in nations to attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, the 'country in tiers' may not be so widely understood outside of the UK.

Each of the devolved nations in the UK had the power to implement the restrictions it wished during the pandemic. In October 2020, Scotland and England introduced a system of 3 tiered-restrictions based on local variations in infection rate, meaning areas of high infection could be treated differently than areas where infection rates were lower.  Tier 1 was deemed 'Local COVID Alert Level Medium', 2 was '[...] Alert Level High' and 3 was '[...] Alert Level Very High', and the restrictions placed upon citizens were commensurately higher in each.

An updated version of the tiers was implemented during the second lockdown in December 2020. Between January 2021-March 2021, all areas of England were moved into a new Tier 4, during the third UK lockdown.

'Shakin’ this one’s gonna take years'
People in the UK might talk about ‘being unable to shake off a cough’ when it lingers around for a few weeks.

'I'm going to be a friend of the Earth'
Friends of the Earth is an international network of organisations that campaign on environmental issues, with a particular emphasis on social, political and human rights.

The melody of the line also recalls the 'I'm a friend of the answering machine' line from The Answering Machine.

Songs with a link have explanations.

• Introduction
• Be Hard On Yourself
• Reprogram The Gene
• Murder Machines
• The Crow and the Nightingale
• Sierra Leone
• Care

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