Name: Numb by DavidHutton
Duration: 3 min 21 s
Description: Raw version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2H7gTCzQzY

Funny how a sad breakup song can make you feel good.  Good creation, David.

There's got to be more but this will do quite nicely herein the dark...Durge

I really like this song, David!! 😊 👍 

Lovely ambient feel with meaningful lyrics.  Great work here!

I really enjoyed listening to this one. You have a lovely sonorous voice, too. 

magnificent song, very fine guitar and lovely charming voice

Excellent guitar sound extremely well mastered! What guitar is this? The voice is a little too far for an intimate song.

Well as the clocks go forward tonight, (or maybe back - I never can remember), meaning we gain (or is it lose?) an hour, (though obviously we don't really), so it will be darker (or lighter) in the morning (or is it evening?) I thought it would be timely, as it were, to take a moment, and draw from my deep intellectual insight into the matter to explain all there is to know about that tricky little bugger, time.  

You're welcome.

Starting as a ditty which was then utterly transformed with Seagull's production, arrangement and musical genius, drawing on Dan-DT's deft touch on the soft squidgy bits, it was eventually incorporated into Seagull's brilliant "Compendium of Time".  Why not take a little of your own to watch it on YouTube here :

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJqh6iXnTaXJL-MkyxWQ_UV-H6vTtiVv3

You can find more of Seagull's beautiful music here:

https://soundcloud.com/farout-music-studio

And Dan's audio craftsmanship here:

https://soundcloud.com/dan-t-3
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Old Father Time

Did you commence, at once, or have you always ever been
And will your pounding heartbeat ever cease?
Are you a sense, or force, or something other in between?
Simply ticking down to each and every last release?
Is your pulse rate constant in this exponential universe?
Or does my biology speed the tempo of your rhyme?
Why are the lifespans of your subjects so potentially diverse?
Do you hear me cry your name, Old Father Time?

Is your mission merely measure, or are you yourself the cause
Of evolution and decay of matter's elementary doom?
Are you the seemly pressure on the future's pending pause
Ethereally benign or other natural force subsume?
Can you shift like rays in prisms, temporal rainbows to behold
Are you the cause of age or do you simply count it's lines
Is your rounded face imprisoned in a cell numbered twelvefold
Do you hear me cry your name, Old Father Time?

At terminal expansion of our present universe
For its destined re-contraction to begin
Will your hands slow to a halt then slip into reverse
Or count us down in forward time back to our origin?
Will the ultimate compaction trigger seasonal adjust
Predicate upon your base the final great rewind?
Then will you recommence or revert back to gently ticking dust?
Do you hear me cry your name, Old Father Time?
______________________________________________________________________
Photo - a little holiday snap from NASA's astonishing James Webb Space telescope

Old Father Time - with Seagull and Dan-DT

out of rope

C I miss the sun
Am don’t know where he’s gone
F but not as much as I G7 miss you

C I stay indoors
Am pace these floors
F Forgot what it is to G7 kiss you

Em I know time is F running out
Em don’t know what this F song’s about
except G7 growing old
dm7 growing G cold x2

C There’s less time ahead
than Em what’s gone before. 
F What will we do 
with the G7 years left in store?

C Use them or lose them, 
Em that’s what they say. 
F Keep on breathing
till G7 that judgement day 

C And I don’t want F hope
C I won’t F despair
C am out of F rope
but I don’t G7 care

for these C changing F times
the C digital F stew
I C read the F signs 
to get a G7 clue

Em Just another empty F weekend. 
Em Nothing to do but F sleep. 
Em These dark and F wintry days. 
Em How slowly, how mercilessly they F creep. 

Fmaj7 I can’t make the day G anew; Am
Am has it all run out at G last?
Fmaj7 All is silent in this G listless Am room.
Am I live with shadows of the G past.
Of the past  F G

(repeat ‘there’s less time ahead’ section + add)
No, I don’t want hope / I won’t despair
am out of rope / but I don’t care /
I just don’t F (G bass) care. (E shape one fret up, soft)

TASCAM DR-05

out of rope

adieu adieu

(em) back to balance 
a gate in the (c) day

(em) Ten of Swords
at the end of a (c) play

(g) (the) purpose of the (c) cross
(g) (the) pain of our (c) Lord

(g) I don’t know what I’m (c) doing 
or not (bm) doing, of (am7) course

(f) how to get back – (g) back to where? back to where?
(f) how to get back – (g) back to where

thy (c) plaintive (g) anthem (f) fades
(c) adieu (g) adieu (f) adieu
in (c) those next (g) valley (f) glades 
and (c) you and (g) you and (f) you

love to drift
through the clouds

far above
the worlds below

(the) blood of the lamb
(the) promise of the seed 

I don’t know what I’m thinking 
or not thinking, indeed

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley-glades 
and you and you and you

clock the seconds 
afore they go

reconnect 
to the flow

tender is the night 
on a winding mossy way

in love with easeful death 
yet still wanting to stay
how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you

split the heart
of the tree

divided self 
one, two, three

(the) nightingale’s repose 
her last song on the air 

I don’t know why I’m sensing 
but not seeing the rose 

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you (et vous et vous et vous)

(fade out on adieu adieu adieu x 3)

NB
(uses some lines and variation of lines from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale: 'thy plaintive anthem fades'/ 'adieu adieu'/ 'next valley glades' / 'tender is the night' / 'winding mossy way' / 'in love with easeful death')

adieu adieu

This world of ours is nuts.

So, in an act of utter lunarcy I have decided to marry the moon and bugger off somewhere else.

Herewith my serenaded pledge of love and proposal of marriage.

I have every confidence.

Goodbye everyone.

Goodbye.
__________________________________________________________________________

Selene

Now every sun has set
Dark as it can get
No dawn will bless my crescent dreams
Of touchdown on your crater lips
Sweet penumbrally eclipsed
Selene
Entrust me to Tranquility’s sea of moondust for infinity
Phase my mind with dark-side thoughts pristine
Selene

Unpick your tidal lock
Let that planet run amok
Let’s spin away to astral pastures green
Helium-3 wedding isotope
We’ll solar system-atically elope
Selene
Ultimate caesarean birth, father Theia and mother earth
I adore your ellipsoidal slight scalene
Selene

Your pert axial tilts will carry me, ah won’t you marry me?
We’ll wax and wane as one, making moonlets, the stars between
Selene
_______________________________________________________________________
Photo courtesy of NASA

Selene

Something like a quarter of the people you looked at today will have some form of mental health issue this year.

Far more than that will be seriously impacted by the mental health struggles of their loved ones.

I made this for someone very special.  

Seemed more honest done in one take.
________________________________________
Glide Path

Breaking of the snow
Turns my head, to face the west
Where memories play for show
They never rest.
Eyes are clouding down
The more I hide, the less I smile
Saddest clown
For miles and miles.

Portrait of my face
Staring back, from times long past
The blackest space
Where my shadow’s cast.
Conversation stalls
Me and I, in fractured sense,
Childhood’s pall
On emotion’s fence

And where from here?
And when to there?
And what of fear?
And who should care?
And why the tears?
And whose despair?
And how to see,
What once was me?

Water kissing salt
Cry of pain, dissolves my mind
It’s all my fault
Crevasses of the conscious kind
Sharpest form of dark
Biting hard, my ego’s lip
Laser stark
As focus slips
________________________________________
Photo by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash

Glide Path

When I was in infant school my class was a ragbag bunch of scruffy working class urchins, self included.  National health glasses held together with band aids, hand-me-down clothes, bruises, jam sandwiches.  There was a kid in that class who was very quiet, often absent.  Good at reading.  Good at running.  Kept himself to himself.  Sat at the back, never made eye contact.  Never put his hand up.

Turns out he was very deaf and spending a lot of time in hospital with operations of various sorts.

When he was seven he was given a hearing aid - huge thing the size of a transistor radio that sat in his shirt pocket.  The story I heard was that when he first went home with it his mam took him for a walk down a country lane to try it out.  He was very upset that it was obviously broken - all sorts of odd scratching and buzzing noises.

They eventually realised that he was hearing insects for the first time.  

Imagine that.

Often wonder what became of him.
_________________________________________________________________________

Huge thanks to my two friends here: Paco for inspiring and driving this project with his wonderful music, and Oddrun for lifting my simple lyrical efforts to another level entirely.
__________________________________________________________________________

A Good Boy

A symphony of crushing silence 
Played his timpani of weathered clay
Under lowered eyes that cried defiance
He’d softly make his quiet way
A guiding star that burned with life, but ever failed to shine
Kept his distance, from afar, no avatar to hide behind
He’s a good boy, so they say, in their condescending, pitied way.

Inputs built of aural mud are clinically desensitised
Muffled whispers trundle under cobbled skies of grizzled grey
Dreams and aspirations that never could be realised
He’d tightly close his eyes and lightly kneel to pray
Social cripple loner ‘neath a joker’s plastic smiles
Silent rippled mannequin, cartoon audio spastic child
He’s a good boy, so they say, in their well meaning, hurtful way.

Flip the switch and hear the light
Bear witness to the revelation
A trip to day-sound from his silent night
Demolishing all his expectations
Sweet blushing kiss of angels’ eyes
One of them has turned the volume dial
To flush his muted domicile
And hear the crickets singing on the chamomile

So cast the light fine, on the deafened child’s mind
And let the sound shine as the clearest of days
A new world’s flight is leaving dark behind
Clarity rebound leads the way
Breathe the noise, of those blissful waves
Touch the sense as darkness fades
He’s a good boy,…..he’s a good boy…..

So swing the arc’s beam, bless the lonesome soul
Illumination wakes the inner self
Warmth of seemliness melts the cold
Communication taken off the shelf
Breathe the noise, of those blissful waves
Touch the sense as darkness fades
He’s a good boy,…..he’s a good boy …. He’s a good boy now.

A Good Boy:  MidiSound, Oddrun Eikli, 1234567890

....I hope he will forgive the presumption...
____________________________________________________________________

This little project only stirred into life when graced with the pulse of Debbie's wonderful accompaniment and the breath of David's visionary arrangement and production.  Thank you both, dear friends.

Find Debbie's piano music here: https://soundcloud.com/debra_buesking
and David's guitar music here: https://soundcloud.com/david-dunhamuser589535203
_____________________________________________________________________

.... Inspired By Mr. Pärt's Spiegels

Dear God, just look at the state of you - what the hell happened?
Did time do that all by itself?
Chiselled and scraped with gentle, temporal strength?
Yesterdays now patterned well with telling tales of wear and tear.
Always took such good care that you ticked every health kick box
But all the ticks collect their tocks, bundling up the time we thought was dangling spare.

And wrinkly skin comes out to play, crafting plots with crumpled neurons badly frayed, and
Liver spots about the edges worn of happy recollections,
Waltzed away, invisible to the swinging of that penduled clock.
Take your eyes off it for just a minute and you’ve lost a day, 
And then a decade’s worth of wry reflections,
Lovingly to fold them up and let them lie in memory’s pocket.

Those lines that contour of your brow, a biography of creases now
And all cut down so very deep.
Each epidermal void crevasse life’s stylus tracks a scratching past
Evinces of a record no mortal hard re-format could delete.
And of your eyes, sallow yellowed at the margins, framed by corvid feet
Rigid-set to well outlast whatever bargained span of life your good Lord deems replete.

As if your face lampoons of age itself, wrecked and bent
Of scars that trace minutiae, carved in master sculptors’ stone
And none too soon, for just that task and that alone, recording compressed of the past..
We both know well which ones are smiles and which the pain that heaven sent,
The former few, soft of the flesh, the many others sunk unto the very bone,
The harshest welt of any sole upon the universal cobbler’s last.

But does it help to so reflect, or but to hurry time’s neglect?
Of such consideration circles wrapped in worry tearing down
All edifice of self respect, the towering pit of pity comes once more to town,
Parades a circus fine of talents, self deprecating jestered clowns
And galloping horses all the while stampede about the rounded ropes
Vespered peace forever sought, just out of reach, concedes of futile, now confounded hopes.

So what of forward self projection, folding the creases back behind
And out of sight to speculation on future solaced peace of mind?
Perhaps again the crashing wall of fast reality, solid bricked
Determines upward focus but to fall, as if to gravity’s grounded truth 
Tricked of consequential solitude, rimed of age, aching of the aged sick
No respite there nor rectitude as once you found in torrid youth.

But perhaps I’m speaking out of turn and out of place,
For though your memories sear and burn as if to carbonise some worthwhile trace of validity
On that unholy visage lit by lives lived long before….
It matters not and changes nought, not a jot nor yet a thought
For you and I know better than to seek a settled score from comment fair
After all, you are I, staring back at me from the mirror mounted there.

.... Inspired By Mr. Pärt's Spiegels ... With Debra Buesking and David Dunham

Funny old world.  Whilst scrumping about on SC my travels took me to Michele's cloud where I alighted on his track as named above. Sharp intake of breath and a hurried message to Michele to ask if he might be so kind as to permit me to pen a few words to accompany it.  He graciously agreed.  Having nothing in mind at the time I hastily back-pedalled and explained that it might be best if he didn't hold his breath....next day I listened again and Mr Spotty Book called over Mr Pen for a chat.  What followed in the next hour or so is somewhat blurred.  I always try to read a text in one take, for integrity's sake.  This was my fourth attempt and the only one I managed to complete.  

I decided to quit while I was ahead.

Thank you, Michele, for the warm nostalgic smile infused in this wonderful music of yours, and for the (unexpectedly moist) journey upon which it took me.

Find Michele's music here:  https://soundcloud.com/michele-ansani
________________________________________________________________________________

All the old little things we have lost

Of course, you know, Dad, that some stuff doesn’t work too well these days.
I’ll forget odd bits and bobs, like, maybe having lunch or doing promised jobs
Blimey, even birthdays on occasion slip the mind
As today’s neurons disconnect, recall’s evasion of my yesterdays so to find.
I actually forgot why I came into this room in the first place
Stood a while, cast about, then saw your face
Your smile leaping out from the old photo there
Engendered mine, returned, locked in loving stare
And propelled me back to play in those monochrome years
You know, our old box brownie’s still tucked away in the cupboard under the stairs.

Remember how it was, Dad,  how we lived, things we had?
Thrupenny bits and ha’pennies and bikes with hard rubber wheels
Plastic shoes and sock holes darned
Sparse but regular high carb, high fat meals
Never did us any harm
Hand-me-downs all around, we craved the latest style
Segs in shoes and outside loos
A homely fireplace, though just the one
We’d huddle round, our toasting forks with crumpets on, and laughing all the while

So I won’t forget all the old little things we have lost
Things so casually into history’s family album tossed
But neither have I lost my tendency to tears, welling soft
From the broken heart that burned for you, 
Then split apart and turned to frost
That day you died, just fifty two, so very young.
Who’d have thought that all those old little things
Would fill the font of memory springs 
From which this tearful smile of mine has sprung.

All the old little things we have lost: some words set to the music of Michele Ansani

Hey everyone - Mr Spotty Book and I thought we'd quickly rattle off a chirpy little choon to try and capture the global mood of the moment.  You're welcome!

By rather clever use of an unedited, zero production, rough one-shot take, a woefully failing voice and the virtuoso  touch of a buzzing string, I think I've successfully managed to impart an air of total amateurishness to the piece.  A level of rustic backwoods front porch authenticity that them there pro's can only dream of.... :)

Have a brilliant day.
________________________________________________________________________________
The Good Earth Calls

Watching dust play evening’s light
Skips the beams, or so it seems
I’m wondering if dust has dreams
When it settles out of sight.
Finest diamond has its flaws
Don’t need perfection just because
I listen, and the good earth calls, tonight.

Misplaced trust, screaming lies
Pollen falls in howling squalls
A shattered world that just appals
Such a sorry sight that greets my eyes
As crypto fool’s gold they adore 
Flotsam morals wash these shores
I listen, and the good earth calls, tonight.

Staring at my feet what do I see
Best support I got and the only ones for free
Guess that’s how the hammer falls
I listen, and the good earth calls, for me

Made my peace to seek respite
Watching clouds for hours and hours
Prone within this bed of flowers
Withered as the line of hopes I’d write
Life’s pearl had deeply fissured cracks
Optimism took two steps back
I listened, and the good earth called, tonight.

Athena breathed life to my clay
Clay don’t cost much but that’s okay
Lord I listened, ……….when the good earth called, tonight.
________________________________________________________________________________
Photo by Patti Black on Unsplash

The Good Earth Calls

life with you (music by john chilton, words by jean rhys and john chilton)  (cover)

Raw version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2H7gTCzQzY

Numb

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