The door stands open-
Across lines, invisible hands are held, goden streamers building in the night.
Alone, the possibilities are enormous.
Step outside and parasites, deprived of their meat wait to suck on tiring flesh,
Unending statistics that fatten leaders, prisoners of their morality.
Afraid of death, we cannot save ourselves.
To breathe is not enough.
Yes Sir, I Will
When you woke up this morning you looked so rocky-eyed,
Blue and white normally, but strange ringed like that in black.
It doesn't get much better, your voice can get just ripped up shouting in vain,
Maybe someone hears what you say, but you're still on your own at night.
You've got to make such a noise to understand the silence,
Screaming like a jackass, ringing ears so you can hear the silence
Even when it's there. Like the wind see from the window,
Seeing it but not being touched by it.
*
Words sometimes don't seem to mean much
Of anyone we're used more than most.
Feelings from the heart that have been distorted and mocked,
Thrown around in the spectacle, the grand social circus.
*
Up against the rows of grey robots who control our lives
The things we have to offer sometimes seem so frail
As they plan destruction and gain respectability
We offer our creativity and are made outcasts.
*
We didn't expect to find ourselves playing this part,
We were concerned with ideas, not rock and roll,
But we can't avoid that arena,
It's become a part of us even if we don't understand it.
*
In attempts to moderate they ask us why we don't write love songs.
What is it that we sing, then?
Our love of life is total, everything we do is an expression of that,
Everything we write is a love song.
*
We look for alternatives,
But the enormous power of the media makes it so difficult
To establish foundations. Their lies and distoritions are so extreme
That everything becomes poisoned and corrupted.
We can become media personalities,
But it is always on their terms.
We're tired of living up to other people's expectaitons
When ours seem so much higher.
Intelligence seems so easily dismissed
When it doesn't conform to mainstream values...
Social intellignece merely requires agreement and compromise.
*
The boundaries are becoming narrower as the State becomes more paranoid.
Under authoritarian rule, conformity becomes the only security.
Fear is a powerful weapon against human development.
Cowering in our temples of self there's little chance of change;
The State is aware of that. The bomb serves many functions.
If fear of the omnipotent God is no more,
The nuclear Father will govern with his shepherd's crook,
Drawing his flock closer to the valley of the shadow of death.
*
Those of us who stand out against the status quo
Do so against all odds.
We cling so closely together
Because we have little other than ourselves.
*
Critics say it's just punk rock or that we're just naive anarchists.
They hope to descredit us with their labels and definitions.
Throughout history societies have condemned those who are later later celebrated as heroes.
In so many borgeois homes Van Gogh's sunflowers radiate from the walls,
Yet he lived in utter misery, condemned by those very same people.
Why is it that the kind and gentle are subjected to violence and ridicule?
How is it that the small and mealy-minded have gained os much power?
What perversion has taken place that we are governed by fools?
*
We've had problems from self-appointed Gods from Bishops to MPs.
They've tried to ban our records
Saying we're a threat to decent society.
Fuck them. I hope we are.
What kind of depraved idiots think they can silence others by depriving them their voice?
For fuck's sake, who are these lobotomists?
As if walls only had one side.
Whispered intimacies might not get through,
but cires of anguish know no barriers.
How long do we shout for?
Denied airwaves, we trust in the wind to carry what we say.
But sometimes we've found ourselves shouting into the wind
When we should have been confiding in each other.
It seems so absurd that we are denied the chance of ever beign truly free.
Make freedon at best a dream, at worst an insulting privilege.
What space is there for self-expression and personal development
When over half the world's population is starving?
There are so many things that might have been done,
But rooted on this spot in the desire to find the solution,
There's little to see and feel
But the sighing and dying of our world.
But for suffering
We might have been a part of it rather than apart from it.
*
Making compromises
Brave fronts, deceitful disguises.
Turning a blind eye to the lies just to keep it all together,
But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder whether it's worth it.
What did you know? What did you care?
Smiling and socialising.
Endless philosophising.
Surface agreements, statements of fact, trying to prove we can do it,
But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder who can see through it.
What did you know? What did you care?
Bargains and sacrifices.
Cheap tricks, cheaper devices.
Holding the vision but losing our sight, endlessly searching solution,
But sometimes when I'm alone like this I wonder how much is just institution.
What did you know? What did you care?
Anarchy's become another word for, "got 10p to spare?"
Another way of saying, "I'm OK, osd you out there."
Another token tantrum to cover up the fear.
Another institution, another cross to bear.
WHat did you know? What did you care?
*
Anything and everything can be so easily insititutionalised,
A poor parody of itself. Itself contained by itself.
There's no point in just mouthing some words.
The token tantrums just aren't enough,
Nor is speed and weed and the Positive Creed.
Exclusive clubs where the various tribes congratulate each other for doing fuck all.
Will achiev nothing but the strengthening of the status quo.
Punk has spawned another rock and roll elite,
Cheap Rotten Vicious imitations thinking they'll change the world
With dyed hair and predictable gestures. Nouveau Wankers.
There are 1000 empty stages waiting for their empty performances,
A thousand empty faces waiting for their empty sances.
How many times must we hear rehashed versions of Feeding of the 5000
By jerks whose only fuck off to the system has been one of the wrist?
It's the Feeding of the 5 Knuckle Shuffle.
*
If there was no government, wouldn't there be chaos?
Everybody running around, setting petrol bombs off?
And if there was no police force, tell me what you'd do
If thirty thousand rioters came running after you?
And who would clean the sewers? Who'd mend my television?
Wouldn't people lay about without some supervision?
Who'd drive the fire engines? Who'd fix my video?
If there were no prisons, well, where would robbers go?
And what if I told you to Fxxk Off?...
The rock and roll swindler says it's OK to plunder,
So the pirates set sail to rape any ethnic culture they can plug a mike into.
The imperialists rub their hands in glee
As the slave-boy hunts out butt-ends in the garbage cans.
Is it any wonder there was such a sickening celebration over the Task Force?
When so called radicals work hand-in-hand with the ruling elite?
...Identities have become corporations,
Social egos and media moulds,
Scholars of ad-man's dreams. Prescribed futures;
Are we really so dumb, so cowered into submission
That not only are we prepared to eat shit
We're also prepared to say thanks for the privilege?
Whould we accept servility as a bargain for dignity?
WHy should we passively accept death as a bargain for living?
Why accept this robbery of life? Why accept this pillage?
The rights of the inidvidaul are dependent upon
You realising your right as an individual.
People are so easily deluded into thinking they've instrumented choice.
WHere in reality they're nothing but passive observers.
Passive observers do nothing but
Passively soak up creativity and say, "wow that's me."
Passively soak up destruction and sy, "Oh no, not us, not us."
There are those who strive for value and meaning,
Who search for reason and purpose;
Their efforts are negated by passive observers.
*
They spend days before the TV set so burned out--
Is it any wonder they've lost all sense of vision and possibility?
What chance does it anyone have when all the spaces are filled?
Sipping breakfast teas to the sound of Space Invaders.
*
Television is today's Nuremberg.
Bowing to its authority, they become it.
I've seen four-year-old children conforming to media roles,
Main-lining the gross theatre that will become their lives.
The television has so dampened people's anger.
The population is mesmerised by the flickering screen.
And the streets, where the politics of reality were once created,
Are deserted at night and the rulers sleep secure.
They are under no threat as long as the people are sedated.
Those who suffer head-aches from excessive intake of electrons are prescribed valium,
Or pay for a fix at the pub where men have to piss up the wall
and the stench of urine lasts well into the next pint.
*
Entertainment is designed to gloss over real problems
And very often those who profess dissent only add to the deception.
Any information that we receive concerning the real world is carefully controlled,
Why else would fiction have such licence?
We are allowed to see endless theatrical deaths,
But when the real deaths started on the Falklands
Government censors prevented us from seeing them.
We were given the excuse of "National Security"
By the lying shits who were interested only in saving their political skins.
It didn't matter a fuck to them how many died
As long as their popularity ratings didn't suffer,
For that reason alone we were sheilded from the truth.
WHile the real violence is kept form us
We are exposed to constant pantomines of death and destruction.
Those in power are rightly aware that if we had access to the real facts
We would cease to be simply simply passive observers.
Media coverage of Viet Nam created massive dissent in the USA
Thatcher's government was aware of that when, embarking on the Falklands charade
Tose who did travel to the Falklands found their reports dramatically cut down.
Meanwhile, at home, we were fed fabrications of Britain's "glorious war."
The truth that is filtering out now paints a very different picture.
*
It's often said that truth is the first casualty of war,
It is, but the same could be said of life.
From birth we are threatened and beaten into submission
By family, churh, school and state.
From then on we're easy game for the powermongers
Like pathetic circus dogs we hunt out praise
Or, when our true nature finds its way to the surface
We hide in the darkness, our tails between our legs.
At all costs we are prevented from realising our own potential.
We are conditioned into being passive observers.
If the ring-master offers war,
We have been conditioned to passively accept it.
War can only exist through passive acceptance.
It is nothing but a demonstration of the weakness of human will.
If the clown offered peace
We will have been conditioned to accept that, too,
But peace can not and will not be maintained through passive acceptance.
Peace will require constant demonstrations of personal strength,
Constant effort, constant hard work,
Reappraisal, consideration and devotion.
Which of those qualities were you taught in schoolrooms?
WHereas war simply requires the masses as cannon-fodder,
Peace requires individuals to relise their own potential.
The odds are hopelessly against because the State deliberately destroys human will.
*
Passive observers offer nothing but decay. How easy it is for us simply not to bother...
*
As pacifist observers we are too easily forced back into tokenism, Makin hollow gestures against the wheels of the juggernaut. The line is delicate. The spaces have always been created by the gentle and caring, To be later filled by bullies and egoists. We can try to fill those spaces with the stregth of our love... But limiting examples like limiting Greenham peace Camp to women only is a political ploy, But if it is a demonstration of sexual exclusivity it is a sham. Aren't we seeking to destroy all forms of exclusivity? Does our own oppression give us the right to oppress others? Unless we are prepared to oppose all oppression, we stand guilty of direct contribution to it.
*
"Let them eat cake," said Marie Antoinette As she wiped the cal's blood from her lips.
*
"Proud to be British," said Maraget Thatcher
This website was originally produced by Southern Records in the 2000s. It has been reconstructed as part of http://theartofcrass.uk