ChildLike Faith In Childhood's End (στον Chris)

Η αβεβαιότητα της γνώσης είναι το ίδιο με τη βεβαιότητα της μη-γνώσης?

Στον Chris

Είχα υποσχεθεί αυτό το κομμάτι του Peter Hammill από τον δίσκο των Van Der Graaf Generator "Still Life" του 1976, αλλά ως αμετροεπής που είμαι, δεν θα μπορούσα να περιοριστώ μόνο σε ένα track - που μάλιστα δεν είναι και από τα αγαπημένα μου, έτσι δεν είναι;
;)

Συνεπώς, προσθέτω ένα ακόμη από το ίδιο album, που θεωρώ ότι ταιριάζει απόλυτα με το άλλο. Τουλάχιστον για μένα...





Σε βλέπω στο ποτήρι μου, λέμε --->



Καλό μήνα σε όλουζ


ChildLike Faith In Childhood's End
[12'24'']

-κλικ χίερ
του νταουνλόουντ
μπόουθ τραξ

Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart
It's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
and try to make a start...
at seeing something more
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
If I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.

There was a time when more was felt than known
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
we live, we die... and yet?

In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now that path has reached the border
and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in unruffled grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.

As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us, yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us, still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus...
we don't yet know what we are.

Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man,
with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows.

We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest, but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.

Even if there is a heaven when we die,
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that always comes as answer to the question
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"

Adrift without a course,
it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture
what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
dreams of a grander thing than we are.

Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?

Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.

Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes...
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place;
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wander in the waste...

And the children who were ourselves move on,
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.

All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
naked to the galaxies... naked, but clothed in the overview:
as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.

And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.

In the death of mere Humans Life shall start.

Το "έγκυρο" NME είχε γράψει και κακές... κακίες και κριτικές
(πολύ κακές όμως!) για τον Hammill.
Εκείνος ανταπάντησε με επιστολές που τους απαγόρευε (sic)
να ξαναναφερθούν στη δουλειά του.

Still Life
[7'24'']

-κλικ χίερ
του νταουνλόουντ
δις τρακ του


Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices, now dumb:
what have we become? What have we chosen to be?

Now, all history is reduced to the syllables of our name
Νothing can ever be the same
Νow the Immortals are here.


At the time, it seemed a reasonable course
to harness all the force of life without the threat of death,
but soon we found
that boredom and inertia are not negatives,
but all the law we know
and dead are Will and words like survival.

Arrival at immunity from all age, all fear and all end....
Why do I pretend? Our essence is distilled
and all familiar taste is now drained
and though purity is maintained
it leaves us sterile,
living through the millions of years,
a laugh as close as any tear...
Living, if you claim that all that entails is
breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking,
spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down
and ultimately passing away time
which no longer has any meaning.

Take away the threat of death
and all you're left with is a round of make-believe
Μarshal every sullen breath
and though you're ultimately bored by endless ecstasy
that's still the ring by which you hope to be engaged
to marry the girl who will give you forever -
that's crazy, and plainly
it simply is not enough.

What is the dullest and bluntest of pains,
such that my eyes never close without feeling it there?
What abject despair demands an end to all things of infinity?
If we have gained, how do we now meet the cost?
What have we bargained, and what have we lost?
What have we relinquished, never even knowing it was there?

What chance now of holding fast the line,
defying death and time
when everything we had is gone?
Everything we laboured for and favoured more
than earthly things reveals the hollow ring
of false hope and of false deliverance.

But now the nuptial bed is made,
the dowry has been paid
the toothless, haggard features of Eternity
now welcome me between the sheets
to couple with her withered body - my wife.

Hers forever,
hers forever,
hers forever
in still life.

Peter Hammill, 1975

Oι Van Der Graaf σήμερα.

.