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

I Bet You

ice cubes on a red-hot stove will melt.
a drowning man's very first word is help.
if you bet on a horse and the horse don't win, you lose.
if you try to sit on air, you're gonna fall.

take a car without fuel, it ain't gonna move.
a carpenter can't build his house without his tools.
if your shoes are too small, they hurt your feet.
you can't know what's going on if you sleep.

-- Barnes / Clinton / Lindsey (Funkadelic) 1970

risk and fragility

The more you try to de-risk a system, the more accident-prone it becomes, and the more damaging the accidents are....   By using interest rates and monetary policy to try to prevent recessions, central bankers are making the world less safe and more likely to have a horrible accident. They are making the financial system more fragile....

You might not believe that the world becomes more dangerous precisely because you're trying to make it safer. But studies show that after the introduction of seat belts, the number of car accidents went up. Why? Well, people must have felt that because the belts made them safer, and made accidents more survivable, it was OK to take more risks, drive faster and otherwise abdicate responsibility for their own actions....

[I]t's a psychological phenomenon we're talking about. If people are led to believe they are safer, they will quite naturally be less vigilant about risk. [A] sense of risk is a highly useful advantage in evolutionary terms. Risk tells you when something big is at stake and the quality of your actions and decisions matter. If you try to systematically eliminate risk from society -- even if it's out of good intentions -- you aren't helping people at all. You're robbing them of a basic instinct that promotes their ability to look after themselves....

--Dan Denning, The Daily Reckoning (May 8, 2013)

free markets adapt

Markets that are “allowed” to crash, sometimes violently, are usually quick to adapt and evolve, something akin to Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” They are dynamic, responsive, adaptive. In sharp contrast, markets that receive government / taxpayer-sponsored bailouts are “fragilized”-- rendered deaf to the market’s timely lessons and mute in response to the new demands and expectations of market participants.
-- Joel Bowman, The Daily Reckoning (April 14, 2013)

daydreaming

Think of a place I would go.
To where the sycamore grow.
I’m daydreaming
And oh, if you knew what it meant to me
To be where the air was so clear.
Oh, if you knew what it meant to me.
Anywhere but here.
-- Nona Marie Invie / Marshall LaCount (Dark Dark Dark) 2010

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

contact

Une météorite m'a transpercé le cœur
Vous, sur la terre, vous avez des docteurs

Il me faut une transfusion de mercure
J'en ai tant perdu par cette blessure

Ôtez-moi ma combinaison spatiale
Retirez-moi cette poussière sidérale

Comprenez-moi il me faut à tout prix
Rejoindre mon amour dans la galaxie

-- Serge Gainsbourg (1967)