Carnival

“Well, I’ve walked these streets
A virtual stage, it seemed to me
Makeup on their faces
Actors took their places next to me

Well, I’ve walked these streets
In a carnival, of sights to see
All the cheap thrill seekers vendors and the dealers
They crowded around me

Have I been blind have I been lost
Inside myself and my own mind
Hypnotized, mesmerized by what my eyes have seen?

Well, I’ve walked these streets
In a spectacle of wealth and poverty
In the diamond markets the scarlet welcome carpet
That they just rolled out for me

And I’ve walked these streets
In the madhouse asylum they can be
Where a wild-eyed misfit prophet
On a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me

Have I been blind, have I been lost
Have I been wrong
Have I been wise
Have I been strong
Inside myself and my own mind…?”

‘Carnival’ – Natalie Merchant

Songwriters: Peter Anders Svensson / Magnus Sveningsson / Nina Persson

Carnival lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Downtown Music Publishing

Soundings

 

Barstools, beers and lonely cheers

Sideways glances, sound and fears

Top of the loft, corner of the street

Just dropping off, by chance again we meet

 

Perched high above on a leather bus seat

Looking down on you as sun and horizon meet

Living through pictures on your wall

Passing on paper cranes, love and all

 

Resonating strings and sings around

Searching for words unspoken sound

Fathom feeling depths unknown

Silence falls like shell shock tone

 

Rivers of lyrical, satirical rhymes

Flood down the mount of eternal time

A single vase of living water, blooms

Tapped from the source in our living rooms

 

 

 

 

While you were sleeping..

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‘While you were sleeping you tossed you turned
You rolled your eyes as the world burned

The heavens fell the earth quaked

I thought you must be but you weren’t awake, no

You were dreaming you ignored the sun

You grew your power garden for your little ones

And you found brides for them on Christmas Eve

They hung young Cain from the Adam trees

And danced uh oh

While you were sleeping I tossed and I turned too

I closed my eyes but the future burned through

The planet turned a hair grey as I relived the day…

I’ll never catch up to you who sleep so sound

My yawns are useless my heart beats too loud

To go to sleep my mind’s too proud to bow out.’

Lyrics by Elvis Perkins

Pneuma (Breath of Life)

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One simple breath inhaled heavy like dew, set gale force winds in tow

To re-arrange my sentiments, fix my eyes on an other-world abode

The birth was painful like the first, shot like a quivering arrow

Still as a statue outside my sandstone baptism,

this divided my flesh, bone and marrow

 

I returned to life just as it was, but touted a whole new agenda

My circle of friends were aghast at the change,

their replies were like silent surrender

Another life conquered in the spiritual realm, on the North Sydney Bible belt

From an altar to an unknown God – my sacrifice clearly felt

 
Alone among many friends, delivered to Byron Bay’s music fest

Swimming in mud, flowers in my hair, this would put her new faith to the test

We took along a son of a preacher, from the backwater of Mount Druitt ghetto

Jesus shirt, long hair, bare feet, and a heart for all folk, rock and metal.

 

Standing behind him in the communal space

of a crowded purple haze tent city

With multiple bands on multiple stages, belting out blues, dazed in self-pity

He asked them all as they passed us and stared,

had they heard about Jesus’ name?

My heart pounded then, my eyes opened again,

just as much as when Silverchair played

 

So we swam in the mud, we were wrestled to the ground,

not a single clean person around

We walked and we talked, we crowded and surfed,

swam the beaches and baked on the ground

Soaked in tea tree dams to tend to our complexions,

under darkened clouds it pelted down

In the midst of sheer joy my two worlds collided,

I saw that anywhere God could be found.