Self-Portrait with Stolen Painting

**Genre**

"Self-Portrait with Stolen Painting" is a song written by Mikaela Thorn and recorded under her alias ThornBrain. It was released on her fourth album, *Worldbuilder*.

## About

The song is Thorn's experiment with spoken word over music, narrating the story over an Industrial/Post-Punk backing track. The story is told from the main character's perspective as she awakens in an empty dimension and learns how to shape it through inspiration from her favorite video games. At the end, she accidentally summons her personal demons into the dimension as villains. Partway through, the song is interrupted by a short clip of the album outtake, "College Hermit Blues".

Reference is directly made to locations from multiple games including Clock Town from *The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask*, the various ruins of *Zelda: Breath of the Wild*, the cathedrals of *Demon's Souls* and *Bloodborne*, and Ding Dong Dell from *Ni no Kuni*.

## Lyrics

All black

That's all she saw at first

For a second she thought she'd gone blind

Or this is just what being electrocuted is like

No. She saw the rest of her

and the gash in her hand

"How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered

And it healed

"Oh. Well then. If it's that easy,

can I go back home please?"

Her room faded into being around her

Everything seemed to be where it was supposed to

The TV behind her by the closet door

Her just-too small bed in the corner

Her desk and her computer beside it

But something was wrong with the monitor

It wasn't broken, like she'd left it

It seemed completely empty

Like the void she'd just left was in there

She recalled that she had been playing a new game, before all this happened

And the monitor flickered back to life

Inside was the rolling green fields

She so often saw in her favorite games

She could almost reach her hand through

She leaned through the monitor out into the open field

But hesitated for a second

Then decided, what the hell, since when is a coma ever like this

And spilled out onto the grass

It was only a field, no landmarks, at least at first

She couldn't help but play out one of many rousing orchestras in her head just looking at it

On cue, the empty space around her began to fill

Mountains in the distance, at least one volcano

Crumbled stone buildings dotted the landscape

At the center of the field, a clock tower stood in the middle of a walled-off town

Ahead of her, a cathedral sat perched high on a mountain spire

Beneath its shadow, a beastly-looking palace and the cobblestone city it ruled

She didn't even need to think of the details

They just appeared that way, like it knew all of her favorite things

Figures of various shapes, origins, and concentrations of hair traveled in and out of these places

Many, if not all, she knew from specific situations that have always stuck with her

Striking elated chords of familiarity

One problem

That volcano is definitely erupting

"Oops.

How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered

And it calmed

"Oh. I get it."

She wasted no time

Anything she could possibly think of that hadn't already appeared

She willed it into being

From her favorite heroes to the occasional imbecile

For flavor

Taking a seat in the skies

She observed

Her very childhood, and then some, made tangible

The only pieces she'd left out were...

Well. In the off-chance all this is real,

Probably best not to willingly put anyone in danger

As if on cue, to the north, she saw a tower

She knew what such a thing portends

Even the cathedral required a check, just to be safe

"So... How am I gonna fix that?" she muttered

The tower sank back into the ground

And she turned away with relief

In the mountains below where the tower once stood

Many eyes stared up into the sky

"We found her."