Move Over

Things look bad from over here
Too much confusion and no solution
Everyone here knows your fear
You're out of touch and you try too much

The country needs a father
Not an uncle or big brother
Someone to keep the peace at home

If we can't get together
Look out for stormy weather
Don't make me pay for your mistakes
I have to pay my own

If we can not wake you
Then we'll have to shake you
Though some say you'll only understand a gun
Got to prove them wrong or you will lose the battle
Don't you know we'll start a war which will be won by none

Yesterday's glory won't help us today
You want to retire?  Get out of the way

-- John Kay / Gabriel Mekler (Steppenwolf) 1969

All Things Must Pass

Now the darkness only stays at nighttime
In the morning, it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this gray

All things must pass
All things must pass away

-- George Harrison (1970)

shock the monkey

fox the fox.  rat on the rat
you can ape the ape -- i know about that
there is one thing you must be sure of -- i can't take any more
don't you monkey with the monkey
-- peter gabriel (1982)

I Can Feel Him in the Morning

Take me down to the water, let me feel it run over me.
Let me feel the pain and the coldness, the loneliness that there must be.
Can’t you see their dreams as they go drifting by?
Can’t you see their faces and their tear-soaked eyes?

I can feel Him in the morning; I can feel Him in the evening too.
I can hear Him in the morning telling me what I got to do.
Got to make a new world; ought to make the old one right.
I can see Him in the morning; I can see Him in the stars at night.

Take me out to the battlefield; let me hear the shells flying by.
Let me hear the sound of the cannons; let me hear them scream and cry.
Can’t you hear their dreams as they tumble to the blood-soaked ground?
Hear them scream for shelter from the world they never found.

-- Brewer / Farner (Grand Funk Railroad) 1971

american face dust

Change is the thing; that is what we do.
Change is the change that's changing you.

The day that you melt will shine; we'll have a good time.
-- The Seven Fields of Aphelion / Tobacco (Black Moth Super Rainbow) 2009

Circles

from Essays: First Series
Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.

ESSAY X _Circles
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world....
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens....
There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees....

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

tomorrow is already here

Originally the set-up [was] to serve society. Now the roles have been reversed -- they want society to serve the institutions. 
-- Tim Gane / Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) 1996

Amerimacka

The land of the free, built on slavery
Our consciousness in captivity
The promised land is the liar's den
Culture of greed has got to end
-- Garza / Hilton (Thievery Corp.) 2005

childhood lost

"As you can see, everything has just vanished. It's just like the whole thing has been completely erased from the face of the earth. I feel great anger. I feel massive sadness. It's like a complete loss of childhood...."
-- Morrissey, Top of the Pops interview (1983)

sunken waltz

washed my face in the rivers of empire.
made my bed from a cardboard crate
down in the city of quartz.

no news, no new regrets.
tossed a susan b. over my shoulder,
and prayed it would rain and rain --
submerge the whole western states.
call it a last fair deal
with an american seal
and corporate handshake.

take the story of carpenter mike --
dropped his tools and his keys and left
and headed out as far as he could
past the city's gated neighborhoods.
he slept 'neath the stars,
wrote down what he dreamt,
and he built a machine
for no one to see,
then took flight
first light of new morning.

-- Joey Burns / John Convertino (Calexico) 2003

fight club

"You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet."

"The things you own end up owning you.... It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.... Only after disaster can we be resurrected."

-- Tyler Durden (Chuck Palahniuk / Jim Uhls / David Fincher)

when giants fall

Businesses will find it hard to survive, let alone thrive, amid increasing violence and conflict, shortages and logistical interruptions, and a breakdown of markets and financial mechanisms. Individuals will be forced to rethink livelihoods, lifestyles, living arrangements, and locales. Political structures will be in flux. Around the globe, gangsters, maniacs, and mobs will compete with established regimes for the reins of power. Nuclear attacks, domestic terrorism, and other threats that once seemed so remote to most Americans will become an all-too-frequent reality. So, too, will breakdowns, epidemics, and other fallout stemming from economic deterioration, growing social unrest and criminality, and a forced shift toward greater self-sufficiency.
-- Michael J. Panzner, When Giants Fall (2009)