Just posted this on my ‘blog’. Thought I’d share here:
Here’s an extract from the lyrics to my song Entropy:
Oceans will rise,
Continents fall,
As sure as night follows day
She don’t know
Why they come
And they do not stay
Some of you will remember this song. Some of you bought the CD!
Well, the oceans have been rising and the continents have been falling - at least sliding beside and underneath each other - since I wrote these words and with cataclismic results: pacific rim, New Zealand, Chile, Haiti, Japan.
My point in the lyric was a none-too-serious attempt to compare decay in human relationships with examples of the physical world’s inexorable journey from order into chaos. Hence the song’s title. Now, I wrote that song with that lyric in the early 1990s when this planet’s tectonic plates, so far as I can remember, were not on the run.
I still like to play this song at gigs and stuff. But when I sing that part, I can’t help feeling uncomfortable in light of current and recent events. I have no idea whether members of my audience might assume this is a new song written opportunistically after these disasters - inspired by them - instead of a couple of decades before, and as a sideways glance at love.
I think I need to give them a heads-up. Disclaimer. But it feels cheap.
As I wrote on my blog: “The smart reader will be wondering why I’m so absorbed about possible reactions to some words in my song instead of the plight of the peoples that are victim to the circumstances to which the words accidentally and obliquely refer.”
I wouldn’t worry about those lines, Dave. they’re pretty standard fare for song lyrics.
They remind me of Todd Rundgren in ‘Fade Away’ ,when he sings:
The sea will rise, the mountains fall
the Earth will turn itself upside down…
Why not simply introduce the tune - and say what year you wrote it - and maybe add the comment
…‘and I had no idea these lines would prove so prophetic’.
(or just give them the year and let them figure it out for themselves)
I think you’re right, Lenny. I needed to air it, though. Get it off my chest.
Wasn’t aware of the Rundgren song.( He’s clearly a smart lyricist ). I’m going to check it right away. Good grief! Are there any ideas left unplundered?
Hi Dave, look at it as you’re bringing the subject to people’s attention for further thought and contemplation instead of the negative spin your mind is putting on it. Some of the most powerful pieces written do the exact same. The glass is half full, not half empty. Introduce it as an old song that’s become even more pertinent over time due to current events.
I recall a couple of lines from a spy movie (The International) … a corrupt father interrupted from a game of chess with his young son by a telephone call … he receives some bad news on the phone and then asks his son “What do you do when you’re in so deep that you can’t get out?”
The son thinks for a few seconds and replies “Go even deeper.”
I encourage you now to “go even deeper.”
Truth is, tectonic plates have been shifting about since the dawn of Earth. There was once one massive continent; now shifted about into the world we know. It will never stop … until the core cools. When the core cools, the magnetic flux ebbs. When the magnetic flux ebbs, we lose the electromagnetic shield that protects us from the damaging rays of the sun … and we die off. Unless of course the sun goes supernova first. Or an asteroid impact ushers in an ice age. Or the Yellowstone super-volcano erupts catastrophically (it’s now about 40,000 years over-due for a major eruption). I won’t even get into man-made calamities like nucular-war.
Magnetic poles have shifted drastically at least four times in the history of this planet. Antarctica was once a equatorial zone. Major shifts that have occurred in the past are predicted, by scientists, to occur again in the future.
So, fact is … we live in a turbulent world … in a turbulent galaxy … among billions of turbulent universes. What is the one thing that makes it all worthwhile, that makes it possible, the ultimate mystery of human existence? C.S. Lewis says it is “Love”. I tend to agree with his train of thought.
Jim Morrison said none of us gets out alive. So maybe on your next song … go even deeper IYKWIMAITYD.
Thanks Steve and Nick. Spot on. I’ll just say a few words about the song’s provenance before I sally forth (who’s she? ) and concentrate on the critical path like how to get my fingers around the damn’ tune with approximate accuracy (giving me some probs at the moment).
Mind you, I’m not going to write a song about how our sun’s going to become a red giant. Ever… ever, ever.
Verse 1
My name is Red Giant
in the English tongue
But I was Dusty Nebula
when I was young
Verse 2
I’m no Casanova
But if you’ll be compliant
You be my supanova
I be your red giant
Chorus
Baby, I love you like a super-nova
Coming for you at the speed of light
Worked hard all week, now move on over
Just you and me, let’s burn up the night
Verse 3
If you’ll orbit me
Baby I’ll orbit you
Ain’t no lovin’ deed
That I won’t do
Verse 4
Pluck a ring from Saturn
Put it on your finger
You make my motor burn
Cause you’re my hum-dinger
Chorus
Baby, I love you like a super-nova
Coming for you at the speed of light
Worked hard all week, now move on over
Just you and me, let’s burn up the night
Outro
Baby can feel
My expanding universe?
You love me so good
I think I might burst
(repeat and fade) – Dave Keir, Ruddy Duck, Nick C.
Time on your hands everyone? Seriously, my flabber is gasted. I’m going to be a bit more circumspect about what I post here in the future.
Anyway Nick, I hear yours as an anthem to the tune of George Harrison’s Blue Jay Way and submitted to Ridley Scott as soundtrack to the next Alien movie, maybe as background to Sigourney Weaver trying to seduce one (alien).
). I’m going to check it right away. Good grief! Are there any ideas left unplundered?
) and concentrate on the critical path like how to get my fingers around the damn’ tune with approximate accuracy (giving me some probs at the moment).
Hey, Nick. How about:
