1. |
Counting Off Time
05:09
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COUNTING OFF TIME
Counting off time as we sit and wait
Counting off the bars until the middle eight
Counting off time like the three score years and ten
That used to be life’s measurement in the days of way back when
When you spend so much time counting
It’s easy to get lost
And then you have to start again
And duly count the cost
Whether counting up or counting down
We’re always in between
The memory of what’s just gone past
And what’s yet to be seen
The numbers are dancing in front of my eyes
They won’t stay still for long enough to try them on for size
They tell me they’re the future and sharply on the rise
In the ever growing clamour that we have to digitise
Help me see it through
I’m counting on you
The numbers game is slippery
And my grip needs to be true
Whether counting my blessings or counting you out
Control is sometimes hard to find as those digits run about
Counting, accounting, falling off and remounting
Unbalanced on the balance sheet
I’m tempted to duck out and maybe just go walkabout
I’m tempted to retreat
The king is in his counting house, the pauper’s on the street
But their time is ticking over with the same insistent beat
Yes, the king is in his counting house, the pauper can’t compete
But their time is ticking over with the same insistent beat.
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2. |
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PULL THE STRANDS TOGETHER
I’m making a jigsaw but the pieces don’t fit
The colours aren’t matching and the patterns don’t knit
I’m painting a picture that’s not coloured in
I’m searching for detail but where to begin?
I’m playing with fragments, I’m scratching a mark
But really, I’m just wandering around in the dark
I’m short of ingredients to make a full meal
I need binding agents so the taste can reveal
The full flavoured buffet before just suggested
That now on my plate it sits here undigested
Pull the strands together, edit out the dross
Match the clues running up and down with the ones that run across
Follow the finance, check past form
And the chances are you’ll be getting warm
Then warmer still until such time
That you can interpret this pantomime.
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3. |
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A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS (for Helen)
A penny for your thoughts though they’re not yours to give
They come as guests and visitors and don’t have long to live
Distraction spirits them away
And in their place some new ones play
A penny for your thoughts though they’re not yours at all
But they come in uninvited, intending to enthrall
To divert, to convert and lead you to think
But the moment is lost just as soon as you blink
A penny for your thoughts but the focus is elsewhere
I’ll never know for certain if you had anything to share.
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4. |
Here is a Place
03:44
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HERE IS A PLACE
Here is a place that overwhelms my soul
This feeling of wonder is hard to control
I stand stock still and look at it
I doff my hat and I submit
My eyes create inventions, the granite animates
After freezing, cracking and dissolving, I see images it creates
A creature’s head, the shape of a bird
A warriors helmet, all are inferred
I feel the need to fill them with significance
But really, it’s just random architecture
Nevertheless
I’m in the ecstasy of landscape, it overwhelms my soul
I’m in the ecstasy of landscape, it’s hard to control.
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5. |
Push
04:46
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PUSH
I wonder what we’re made of when push comes to shove
Do we draw down some strength from the heavens above
Can we summon some power from deep inside
Or any such tactics to act as our guide
I wonder what we’re made of when we are pulled down low
And we’re dropped without a climbing rope with nowhere to go
The darkness is surrounding and closing off sight
And the only voice that’s speaking says ‘let there be some light’
I wonder what we’re made of when we’re too involved to see
That the universe doesn’t just revolve around me
Will this blindness soon be ended, will the penny start to drop
Will a revelation manifest from the bottom to the top
I wonder what we’re made of when push comes to shove
We can only see the battle with a healthy dose of love.
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6. |
Cut and Paste
04:05
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CUT AND PASTE
Directions from pastures of privilege just won’t cut the mustard these days
We’ve grown used to suspect past behaviour and the patterns that this power
plays
But we’ve doubted the wisdom of knowledge from the mouths of the deeply
surveyed
And prefer our own homegrown conjectures to arm our own crusade
And to gather bits and pieces from a wide remit of sources
And build a case, try out and replace as we regiment our forces
And grow a silky variant in spite of paradoxes
Design a tie-dyed spreadsheet and fill in the tick boxes
And cut and paste according to taste
to measure the spec with both high and low tech
To make it fit for purpose to suit the addressee
To make it fit for purpose whatever that might be
A fledgling fabrication, a DIY pathway
But I wonder what someone like John Ruskin would say
Or Morris or Tolstoy or Frank Lloyd Wright
Or any free thinkers who had some insight
Would they dismiss such gestures as shallow conceit
As un-joined up thinking that’s just incomplete?
Or green light these motions as singular choices
Of thinking individuals with independent voices.
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7. |
Trompe l'Oreille
03:22
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TROMPE L’OREILLE
A strange rhythmic sound emerged through the air
A chirring, a whirring vibration was there
Like rapid mechanics
It grew louder then softer
It’s speed seemed to waver
A thin thread of sound
A hemi semiquaver
Presenting dynamics
Always just about to stop but never quite ceasing
It’s soft introspection and gentle increasing
I went nearer, it paused
I retreated, it grew
Embedded deep inside the silence
Sometimes masked by a passing breeze as it blew amongst the branches of
trees
It seemed at times to come from my brain with signals as subtle as vapours of
rain
Very close and intimate but far off and illusive
The capture of a passing voice, singular, exclusive
But soon it was fading
Forgotten, hard to recall
Did I really hear anything at all?
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8. |
An Abstract Take
03:00
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AN ABSTRACT TAKE
It was Ludwig Wittgenstein who said that words confine the great design
And no matter how experience has spread and swirled
The limits of my language are the limits of my world
But I’ll undercut the statement before and suggest this idea for you to explore
Some things they leave me speechless in their power and their awe
And touch emotions deeply as they row in from offshore
And even change your thinking from what it was before
It’s not the words I need to find as they will put restrictions on the mind
I’d be happy with an abstract take
even though sometimes it might be opaque
it acts as counterbalance when words play tyrant’s games
and stands beyond the requirement of the need to call things names
Sometimes I hear an echo of a saying set in song
‘Who feels it knows it’ was the call
It’s much more right than wrong.
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9. |
Find Me a Horse
03:46
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FIND ME A HORSE
Show me the door, I’ve a need to cut loose
Staying here more will be of no use
Find me a horse that can ride these rages
Plot me a course I can steer in short stages
Take me to somewhere that offers some hope
Drop me a lifeline and throw down some rope
Find me the front, or even the rear
Get me to the exit, I’m out of here.
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10. |
Let Come What May
04:40
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LET COME WHAT MAY
Out in the raw I’m walking
I’m tracking a trail not talking
But turning over this and that
Accepting, rejecting at the drop of a hat
Impressions coming fast, some correct, some distorted
One minute confused, the next minute, sorted
Out in the raw, what the hell for
Is it roaming or homing, what is in store?
I can’t say, I can’t say, so let come what may
And maybe you can’t tell a beech from a birch
But the canopy of nature is such a broad church
And though the knowledge of the stars is definitely not mine
I can still look up and marvel at the beauty of pure design
And though I’m plagued by the brain within
and I’m plagued by the rain without
I’m uplifted to heights undreamt of
My mind has been cleared of all doubt
Uncertainty shifted
My spirits uplifted
Come what may, come what may
I’ll carry on walking along this right of way
Come what may, come what may
I’ll carry on walking without further delay.
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11. |
Muse
03:48
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Sometimes you just play too hard to get
Sometimes you won’t be tied down
If I play my pitch in the Latin quarter
You’re on the other side of town
And your silence seems so absolute
To clearly notify
That my hopes must be held in mid-stream
And my plans are on stand by
You’re elusive of course, unknown
And make no promises where things might go
Together or alone
But all can be so different at the sounding of a note
That then gives birth to something else and sets the game afloat
And pieces come together and lines to coalesce
And unlikely forms are unified that you could never second guess
But you’re elusive of course, unknown
And make no promises where things might go
Together or alone.
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12. |
The Nettle and the Thorn
04:37
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THE NETTLE AND THE THORN
Choose your subject, paint a canvas over elongated time
Give it due reflection to fit a paradigm
Then paint it over, block it out
Consign it to history with no lingering doubt
The past world is no more, the next world’s not been born
We’re stuck between the old and new, between the nettle and the thorn
We wait with ambiguity and look for rights of way
That avoid the easy avenues of false prophets and foul play
Those voices of deception with slogans stark and loud
That promise a deliverance to the large expectant crowd
We’re looking to learn from mistakes of the past
And fashion a future that might just hold fast
From inspiring liaisons new life can be born
And give us room to operate between the nettle and the thorn
But here at the crossroad we take nothing for sure
As false dawns are common and joy premature
Be careful what you wish for when agendas are confused
What is granted straight away can later be refused
We must avoid the prospect of a strategy stillborn
And believe there’s fertile grounds to live between the nettle and the thorn
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13. |
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THE SEVEN SWORDS OF INDIFFERENCE
Beware, the seven swords of indifference that greet the unwary
The blades may be blunt but still a little scary
More than a little but not too much
Rejection with the lightest touch
And you’re outside where the winter winds blow
Looking for a lighted window
Where admission might be bargained for
Or at least to gain directions to get in by the back door
Is it so warm inside?
Only by admittance can you possibly decide
To go/
To stay?
Or to shout foul play?
This is your conundrum for today.
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14. |
Neither Heads nor Tails
04:40
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NEITHER HEADS NOR TAILS
The spiritual life needs a belch with a beer
To balance the living a life that’s austere
The sensual life you can demystify
With a hard bed, rough blanket and a cold night sky
Holy, holy. Holy, it’s not all chant and pray
Or elevating thoughts towards a judgment day
It’s tempered by the gritty spoils that form in lands of waste
And when the dealer shuffles you a hand not to your taste
The spiritual life needs a belch with a beer
So, order a drink for both hermit and seer
This physical life is illusion we know
But we’ll still raise a toast to above and below
We’ll swim in cold water and we’ll sing in the rain
We’ll balance our behaviour, we’ll indulge, we’ll abstain
We’ll shift the weight of being as we lie across the scales
Not one side or the other, not either heads or tails
But rather centred upright with arms as counterweights
And open to such movements as the moment generates.
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Rick Wilson UK
Born and educated in London, Rick started messing around with drums in his mid teens.
He embarked on a
career with rock bands including The Work before diversifying his experiences with musicians from other traditions, linking music with story and other art forms. Rick not only performs and teaches but composes, designs soundscapes and installations and
runs music sessions as psychiatric therapy.
... more
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