The school where I learned to read
Falling apart, paint peeling, roof leaking
Forty kids in a class, books ten years old
Teachers buying supplies from their own paychecks, I'm told

The hospital where I was born
Closed last year, couldn't afford to keep the lights on
Now it's forty miles to the nearest ER
Hope you don't have an emergency in your car

The bridge we crossed every day
Condemned now, unsafe they say
Take the long way around, adds an hour to the drive
These were things we built, kept us alive

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Schools, hospitals, roads
The commons crumbling
These were ours, together
The commons crumbling
Who let this happen?

Public library cut its hours down to three days a week
Parks unmowed, bathrooms broken, infrastructure weak
Water mains bursting, been that way for years
City says no budget, while the rich got tax breaks, cheers

Post office closing branches in the neighborhoods that need them most
Transit system breaking down, buses like ghosts
Showing up late or not at all
While the stadiums get funded, while the corporate towers stand tall

These weren't luxuries, these were basics
Things that held us all, things that made us
A community, a society that worked
Now we watch it crumble, feeling jerked

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Water, transit, light
The commons crumbling
These were ours, together
The commons crumbling
Where'd the money go?

And here's the thing about shared substrate
You don't notice when it's working right
But when it fails, when it breaks down
Everybody feels it, all around

Rich people got their private schools
Private healthcare, private pools
But even they need roads that work
Need water clean, need a system that doesn't shirk

You can't privatize everything
Some things we need to share to bring
A functioning society, a place to live
You take from the commons, something's gotta give

My grandma helped build that library
My father fixed those roads
My mother taught in those schools
We built this together
With our taxes, our labor, our care
And now it's falling apart
While someone's yacht gets bigger
While someone's third house gets built
The commons crumbling

The commons crumbling
What we all stood on
The commons crumbling
Everything we shared
The commons crumbling
This wasn't an accident
The commons crumbling
This was extraction
This was the plan

These were ours
Together
Crumbling

THE COMMONS FAILING

This is a collection of my ideas articulated by AI. Workflow: all music by Riffusion/Producer.ai. Most lyrics ChatGPT various versions.

Besides these songs there is a thinking/science project I started early 2025. I have been documenting this project online: https://github.com/albertjanvanhoek/Evolution-by-Emergence 

### License
These tracks (both music and lyrics) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

🆓 You are free to:
• Copy & distribute  
• Remix & adapt  
• Use the track in commercial and non-commercial projects  

📋 Conditions of use:
1. Give proper credit:  
   “Song Title – Emergence – https://soundcloud.com/emergence-223803727/<relevent link> – CC BY 4.0”
2. Add a link to the license text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
3. State whether you made any changes.  
4. Do not imply that I endorse your work.

Enjoy!

THE COMMONS FAILING

Emergence 🐠