Get the latest Vert news as an RSS feed
Listen to the new album:
| Is This Thing On? | |
| The Thing About Tony Jackson | |
| Things at Speed | |
| All Things to All People (People Get Ready) | |
| Monk's Thing (Nutty) | |
| The Light, the Femininity of the Thing | |
| Something Else | |
| Fabrizio's Thing (Raga del Cuore) | |
| All These Things I Know | |
| Thingumajig |
Buy it:
Well I'm standing on the corner between space & time
Watching movements become moments, watching curves turn into lines
& I'm pretty sure I'm waiting, but I'm not quite sure what for
But I know I know this corner, know these roads, been here before
You follow the signs for Satori, take a left at What's It All For
Next to the crumbling planetarium there's a revolving door
This is Gretchen's favourite place she says it's reasonable ground
She says it's love that creates lovers not the other way around
Gretchen Askew
Well she starts like a bad day & she can turn on a stotinki
When she stops you know it's over, but you're not sure what you're thinking
First she pours a drink & then she slides a glass
Underneath & she never spills a drop - yeah she's fast
She brings down the stars from heaven - they all come to hear her talk
She eats yoghurt w/ a knife & combs her eyebrows w/ a fork
She dances like a tramp, she lives her life like she's on-screen
She says story should not just be it should also mean
Gretchen Askew
(I think she thought me up in her head)
It is so, it is not so
The years go fast but the days go so slow,
& how can you tell if you know or you are known?
He left his room in Montenegro & he headed due west
Packed his laptop & his plants & his favourite vest
Hitched a ride on a fishing boat as moonlight stroked the waves
Thought he'd make his way to Venice w/ the money he'd saved
He'd been on the run since Riga, where life had been OK
Had a business selling visas in an internet caf‚
He'd been teaching himself programming a line at a time
By reverse-engineering every virus he could find
Pretty soon he had a petri dish of viruses he'd made
Tucked away behind a firewall at UCLA
In an account that he'd swapped w/ a guy in Senegal
For Frank Sinatra's phone number & a crack for Cubase 4
One Tuesday afternoon he put a virus in a file
& he mailed it w/ the subject "Life's a pitch & then you buy"
Then he stayed awake for 3 days straight, powered by caffeine
& watched & laughed & danced as it brought Wall St to its knees
It is so, it is not so
The years go fast but the days go so slow,
& how can you tell if you know or you are known?
Proud but kind of bored w/ the chaos that he'd made
He hacked the Dax & tapped the stack for a cent on every trade
To a bank account in Nassau, then retired to his room
In the dark side of town, above a bar called "Neptune"
He'd created life online, & now he had a plan
To leave his life behind & to dream a man
To build him piece by piece just like he'd coded up his thieves
& impose him on the world just like the world did on his dreams
He threw his things out of the window & he lay down on the floor
& as he slept he dreamed a fist of flesh, secret, red & warm
This continued every night until he'd finished w/ the heart
& over 7 lucid years he dreamt of nought but body parts
Until he finally had a man, but a man that never breathed
Despite his desperate days he dreamed him every night asleep
Until one night he dreamed of Neptune, who said "I'll take a look
I'll give him life in air & water", & the dreamed one awoke
It is so, it is not so
The years go fast but the days go so slow,
& how can you tell if you know or you are known?
He spent another 2 years teaching his creation all he knew
About the vagaries of life & the evil that men do
& then he slowly introduced him to the world outside of sleep
Til he sadly realised his son was desperate to leave
That he was spending all his days walking through the rainy streets
& would come home only when forced to appear in his dreams
& pretty soon the son was learning to extend his days
By finding endless ways to keep the dreaming man awake
Now he's been running for 3 years hasn't slept a single night
So he hardly sees the storm surround the boat w/ murky light
As the waves paw at the portholes & the crew jump one by one
Until the boat is pulled down under in the sallow birdless dawn
He doesn't swim he just accepts that his sleep is finally here
But the water fills his lungs & lets him breathe & drowns his tears
& w/ sadness, w/ terror, w/ relief he finally sees
That he's also an illusion, that he's someone else's dream
All wrapped up in dusty moulding moonlight, 3 days old
As hues of rust & shades of night protect you from the cold
Outside broken silhouettes stand against the sky
As the colour in the world w/out drains the colour from yr eye
Down on Roon St there's a multitude who think they've seen it all
But they can't seem to remember what the things they've seen are called
In Odessa there's a coder who can recite the names
Of all things underneath the sky, but what they look like he can't say
& the things you can't remember meet the things you'll never know
& they make plans for yr future, all the places you'll never go
In October
Some days hum like a sea shell
Some days are static between channels
Some years autumn never goes
Cos time stays while we flow
& you think that you've remembered all the things that you've got left
& the moon is on yr doorstep singing songs of love & theft
& each song that he sings resonates inside yr dreams
& in the morning will be forgotten, just another rusting leaf
In October
Late one night I was plucking at the albatross of self, sucking on a dried fig, watching polish DVDs on my laptop & playing scissors-paper-stone w/ my id. Playing tic-tac-toe w/ my ego... Oh no! Ego got another row - I thought this game was made so there would be no winners? Ego sez, "I told you so, but if you like we could play Go". "No thanks" sez I, "too few rules & too much strategy. Underneath that grid of stones lies a maze of dreams, a haze of memes ablaze w/ rays of X & Y, geometries of in-between - surreal numbers counted out in black & white."
While saying this I shake a fist at my ego, so id slaps his hand down flat & shouts "Paper wraps stone!". "Not fair!" shout I, "Who you think you are?" Id & ego look at me & just laugh.
Well being laughed at by yr id & ego's no fun, I should know. OK they won, but that don't mean I have to pay attention when they mention condescendingly that they're just me. But what about the albatross?
Well, the albatross is looking pretty piebald. He's been eyeballing a blanket w/ a shiver, & he's given up the DVD cos his polish isn't good & his eyesight's even worse, so the subtitles are blurs of words, long strings of things like the plastic pearls around the neck of the polish farmer's girl who's just walked into shot. She's trying to tell the world that everything is not how it seems - yes, she's been hurled right into a plot, & as the plot unfurls it seems it's got all the usual stuff like money, oil, greed, government lies. & as the girl soon learns, when standard methods fail sometimes the only way to have yr say is to write a letter, wrap it round a brick & send it airmail.
If you'll be my signal, then I'll be yr noise
& let's count down the last days of our prime
I had to lose all my music before I found my voice
But now I'm making up for lost time
She sends shivers down channels never known to exist
& her tones modulate the sublime
It's numbers at dusk, there's only crackle & hiss
As the street turns our words into signs
Do you realise
The stars are dead men's eyes?
The falling snow their frozen night-time tears?
Do you realise
That music always lies?
It just tells you what you want to hear
But did you also realise
That the signal & the noise
Are in the end just two different frames of mind?
The snow falls around & fills the streets up w/ static
& the wind blows its white noise melody
It's days between stations, it's data in transit
The words might get through eventually
I never keep promises, but it's not my intention
It's just that the numbers they always undo me
So drink w/ me to yr eyes, & to yr lips
& we'll put all our faith in entropy
Do you realise
The stars are dead men's eyes?
The falling snow their frozen night-time tears?
Do you realise
That music always lies?
It just tells you what you want to hear
But did you also realise
That the signal & the noise
Have become inextricably entwined?
Last night as I came home from the place where thoughts come from
I met a curious girl w/ spectral eyes & a background hum
She said "Imagine this, imagine this: every number has a twin
& there's no way to know where the twin's gonna go when the number reverses its spin"
She looked at him w/ her fast fury eyes as the dusk was beginning to start
As the sky's light balanced w/ the streetlights' glow in the slow-motion moments before the first star
He felt a promise of sourceless events w/out cause
A direction at right angles to all the routes that he's ever been taught
Step under the bulbshine
Come in under the sound shadow
Everybody's got to learn sometime
Even a partial eclipse is better than never finding out
As twilight shined in her paradigm eyes, hypnotised by the sight,
He stopped, she started to speak, she said "Sometimes somewhere every night,
There's a point on the earth where the sun's roar stops
Where the noise that we've known all our life cuts off
& you never know what's there til it's gone
So it's a silence so lost
Some nights it appears 50 feet above the sea
Some nights it appears between the floors of an office block
Some nights it comes to rest upon a table in a white-tiled caf‚
Where insomniacs are sheltered from the porous dark"
Step under the bulbshine
Come in under the sound shadow
Everybody's got to learn sometime
Even a partial eclipse is better than never finding out.
Diego Moriarty crossed the eucalyptus lawn
& he walked into the party of some Duke he'd met that morning
Over breakfast in a self-serve where he'd spend the usual day
Making power laws out of bell curves in the usual way
The air was thick w/ laughter just one long vermillion whirl
& he found himself gazing at the familiar girl
She said "We know each other don't we?", he said "I was thinking that"
& they started seeking links just like the market seeks the crash
"So do you know the Duke?" - "What Duke?" - "Me neither. Where you from?"
Somewhere unpronounceable where Diego's never gone
They compared lives & pasts & lovers, but they'd never known each other
The conversation faded & they parted garbed in awkwardness
Diego left the party feeling empty sad & nauseous
He never even asked her her name
Diego never asked her her name
2 years pass, Shibuya: "Oh hi, where do I know you from?
Wait, you're the guy I don't know", all enthusiasm gone
He said "It's kind of like a thriller that you saw & then forgot
Where you can't say who's the killer but you still know half the plot"
"No it's more like a car crash, broken glass but no harm done
The policeman waves you past, 'Nothing to see here, move along'"
The next time's new year's eve, '99 - milliminal
The airport in Sofia, by the luggage carousel
Blindsighted by fluorescent light they reach for the same case
W/ air-conditioned eyes he meets the strange familiar face
Can't find a word to say so they just go their separate ways
Diego spends the night in crowded streets scanning features
As the sky explodes w/ star flowers & the screams of desperate preachers
& he doesn't even know why he's so desperate to meet her
But he never even asked her her name
He never even found out her name
7 years of loneliness then 7 years of luck
Diego's getting by, but the familiar face has stuck
He's had his share of loves, thought he was happy once or twice
But it's her face that he sees on walls of cheap hotels at night
One day he sees the Duke, & he can't believe his eyes
Duke says "Seems like a lifetime" & "Have you met my wife?"
She says "We once met at a party, but we didn't get along"
He says "Then Tokyo, then Sofia", but she just shakes her head & yawns
"No you must be mistaken, I don't remember that"
Diego smiles in desperation, says goodbye & walks away too fast
His centre has been taken, his past collapsed, his future's too vast
Diego never asked her her name
He's never gonna find out her name
He never even asked her her name
He's never gonna find out her name
This one, this one's for:
the out-of-phasers
the integrators & differentiators
the biodegraders
the save-the-whalers
border crossers & boundary breakers
hype deflators
demonstrators
circuit makers & circuit breakers
double negators & triple affirmators
& fair traders
genre conflators
repeat-to-faders
5 to the bar 80 hemi-demi-semi-quavers
wall defacers & ID fakers
quitters of day jobs & night course takers
caped crusaders
complicators
all those who live their life by Occam's Razor
trailblazers
Albert Ayler
& stargazers
This one is also for:
the unseen forces
the open-sourcers
renewable resources
questioners of orders & legal aid lawyers
younger brothers & youngest daughters
jaywalkers
longboarders
all those who flow like water
gonzo reporters & public tranporters
everyone who taught me what I know & all that caused this
psychogeographical explorers
all the wedding guests who turned the wine back into water
5 quarters & porous borders
black sheep & dark horses
Cole Porter
Jorge Luis Borges
anyone who ever said "I coulda woulda shoulda oughta
done the thing I thought of when I thought about it now it's too late"
& then just did it anyway
I got some beans & an octopus, & I need to travel fast
Yeah I dreamed I crossed the Bosphorus in a polystyrene raft
& then I dreamed I was insomniac, awake for 15 days
Until I woke up in the second act of someone else's play
& somewhere in the middle of the seventh scene
They came to me in uniforms of ultramarine
They said "Hey!", I said "What?", they said "We know where you've been"
But they were wrong, & I was fast, & as I ran I heard them scream:
Velocity is all you need, so clap yr hands
& in the end you'll come to see that it's all you have
Someone dressed as Father Christmas who'd just held up a bank
Called out my name tried to enlist us, but I had to say "No thanks"
I said "We're being chased by men in hats who don't like where we're from"
He said "They think that all food comes in packs - they probably think yr beans are bombs"
& then he took me by the hand & led us down some spiral stairs
& we travelled through a city in a state of disrepair
W/ the border guards behind us waving pointless questionnaires
& shouting "Have you ever been a terrorist, & did you ever have long hair?"
Velocity is all you need, so clap yr hands
& in the end you'll come to see that it's all you have
Well they tried to arrest me for being in the wrong place
So I tried to make them see they were working on the wrong case
& then the octopus stepped forward w/ a twinkle in his eye
& said "We'd love to chat some more, but we really have to fly"
& then he took me by the tentacle & began to spin
The guards all disappeared behind a blur of suckered limbs
We rose up from the pavement like an angel from a pin
& we flew above the city, we saw sites of might-have-been
& scenes of love & theft, & someone trying to copyright his chin
& as we held a holding pattern, they all raised their heads to sing:
Velocity is all you need, so clap yr hands
& in the end you'll come to see that it's all you have
On particular days in the particular city where I live, there's something particularly strange in the air, you can see it: when the wind blows tablet dust from the chemical factory up the road. & suddenly everybody's gazing at god's windows, suddenly everybody knows what the scientists mean when they say we could live w/out pain - at least until it rains. & then the rain comes & it washes away the dust & it washes away the trust that grew up among us spontaneously.
Walking backwards through the city at night
You might just see it written in the sky
That words are a cloud of dust a ring of bulbs, fading in the twilight
& things which used to be in colour now get shown in black & white
But wait a minute now, stop - let's go back to that factory that I told you about just a moment ago. You see there's something else particularly strange I particularly want you to know: they've got a sign, a giant aspirin made from a 1001 lightbulbs, & when the night falls, I swear it's the closest we get to seeing god's eyeball. Jaded & battered it gazes back at us, totally unenthusiastically.
Walking backwards through the city at night
You might just see it written in the sky
That words are a cloud of dust a ring of bulbs, fading in the twilight
& things which used to be in colour now get shown in black & white
Yrs are the flickering nights
Yrs the wild iteration of days
Yrs too are the sparkling baubles
The sky's grid of vapour trails
& there's a place I know
Where we can watch them unfurl
There's a place I know
& I can take you there girl
Yrs is all that is the case
Yrs the numbers between 1 & 2
Yrs too are the vanished & vanishing
The colours between green & blue
& there's a place I know
Just one vermillion whirl
There's a place I know & I can
I can take you there girl