Album: Le Sacre du travail
There’s no camera that can see the grey line
The overture for the coming dawn
That subtle shift that provokes the birdsong,
The unseen spark that awakes the corn
So let the headlights on the road
Slicing through the morning murk,
Be a metaphor for daybreak, or Be our allegory, for work.
There’s no disk that can save our feelings,
Of an early Tuesday’s run into town,
In the darkness on less than a good sleep,
Faces set with an unseen frown.
So let the rain onto the wheels,
Spell the end of what we see as the night,
Be a metaphor for humdrum,
Be an allegory, of life.
3) When It’s Green
My son asked me once:
«Dad? Do we see the same thing…
When it’s green?»
4) Car Horn Serenade
5) ANTS
We carry more weight than our muscles can bear
Our infrastructure looks familiar when viewed from the air,
'Cos we are Ants! Crawling, marching…
We strip our carrion of the last scraps of their flesh,
Move onto the next victim and start afresh,
We are Ants!
AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrgggggggnnnnts!!!
6) Bird Shit
I wish that we could see this;
The heaving bird’s eye view from any given height,
Our ant hill lives below us,
The crawling cars and snail trails of our human might.
All the flyovers and tunnels that circle round the church,
At the centre of our cities where we fight our way to work,
Where cameras watch our progress on spaghetti-like ring roads,
To business parks, call centres and retail outlet nodes.
Park drive late phone talk push bank home work,
Car Park drive late phone talk push bank home,
Work Car Park drive late phone talk push bank,
Home work Car Park drive late phone talk push,
It all just looks like bird shit!
Just look on Google Earth — the higher up you climb!
And each day we traverse it!
An hour from waking up we’re driving thirty miles.
All the people ripped from sleeping in their luxury mobiles,
On telephones, computers, all «getting a great deal»,
To the car parks by the buildings where we hate away our days,
To buy a little house, a TV and a package holiday.
And all the blue plaques in all the buildings,
Say they’re «Investors in Our Souls»,
But I don’t believe them, not 'til I see it,
Until I put my finger in the holes.
All the time that we give,
To companies who call themselves our friends,
All the time that we live with their aims at heart, their intent.
And then they tell us that we’re important, or
«We're all part of the whole»,
I don’t believe them, not 'til I see it,
Until I put my finger in the holes.
7) Slow Activity In A Lobby
8) Two People in Two Cubicles
In the flickering light she sees Canadian trees,
Log cabins, warm fires and smiles at the aprés ski,
She punches in her name to the company mainframe,
And logs into her pact with the Devil again.
She is lost, she is floating,
She’s like us all, tied to the fabric we wear,
She takes it as she finds,
Lives for the good times,
She’s a product,
She’s a consumer,
And then she’s a girl.
In the cubicle next door it’s time to 'meet the band';
In a Rush T-shirt, pony tail, 2112 tattooed on his hands,
He’s a star through thick & thin,
But he still gets that data in,
A modern day warrior, today’s Tom Sawyer is a clerk.
So let the tapping of the keys,
The hub-bub of the office chat,
Be a meta for disillusion,
Be a metaphor for life.
9) On The Treadmill
We all found out too late (that the contract’s binding)
We could never appreciate that the ads we saw as kids, and
Everything we did were just putting us on the right road.
Putting our houses on our backs,
With our mortgages in tow to fill the cracks,
Between the stuff we can’t provide,
We try to cross the great divide,
And hope we’re on the right road.
All the things we wanted and all the goals we craved!
We were on the treadmill, we became the slaves.
Oh! Did we get lucky?! Or just a metaphor for life?
10) Fireworks provided by the United Governments of the World to makes us feel
better for 3.7 minutes. Please return all viewing glasses.
11) More Of The Aforementioned Birdshit (reprise)