DYSFUNCTIONAL (THE GEN X LOVE SONG)

You took away my pride, you damaged me inside
(but left me satisfied---but maybe that was only me?)

You dragged me through the mud and drained my veins of blood,
but passion it did flood, almost drowning me.

(c) You wasted my time and taxed my troubled mind, now would you be so kind and listen to me whine?

You blackened my skies and told me pointless lies,
it’s you I should despise (so why do I think less of me?)

And now I spout clichés like "I’m the mess you made...
but I wish you would have stayed", now all I’ve got is pathetic me.

I was dysfunctional, you were dysfunctional,
the whole world’s dysfunctional...it should have worked.

I’m not responsible!

Hell's Laughter and Heaven's Ache

Dysfunctional

Dysfunctional (The Gen X Love Song)

I am merely human, trying to endeavor.
I am limitations, I am fur and feathers.
And I yearn to grow beyond my means,
far too primitive to achieve my dreams.

To ascend to failure, is this mankind's station?
To climb up then falter, evolution wasted.
And I beg to know with a primate's tools,
with a hairy heart chained by nature's rules.

Afraid stands each simian,
(clad in tragic artifice of Byzantine proportions)alone.
What foul legacy does endless warfare,
hatred, and slavery bestow?
All born from history's memory: tempest...tragedy..
.a past that can't be disowned.
So what transcendence can pay the penance
each child of man must own?

It's an endless cycle as our reserve crumbles.
Animals that lash out, primal steps that stumble.
We create a world to torment our gods,
and narrow our views to increase our odds.

The Quiet Earth Orchestra

Limitations (by John Ludi as the Quiet Earth Orchestra)

As civilization unravels exponentially and various people I know mutate into that which I can no longer relate to, I am finding this song increasingly relevant. It is from the Soft War album, featuring Greg Kutcher and myself.

Born to estrangement, we're each alone here 
with suspicion and selfish fears.
All in error and thrown together, 
and all fomenting our own dark weather.

Live but never learn, watching bridges burn.

And each new contact contains a danger. 
Words, will or weapons, best to be strangers.
Always uncertain communication, 
person to person, nation to nation.

Live but never learn, watching bridges burn. 
Walls between our lives, doubt clouding our eyes.

(C) Honesty's an empty promise when we speak. 
You are wary, I'm mistrustful and we're both weak.
Bile and venom fill the vacuum with spite and rage. 
Together and isolated, bound and caged.

So all divided and all conflicted 
by finite senses, vision restricted.
And some are watching, but none are listening, 
and some try reaching, but all keep missing.

Soft War

Together and Isolated

Together And Isolated (by Soft War)

Intro song to a conceptual song cycle about an earnest spiritual seeker who ends up going though all of the usual things.

Propelled by momentum, keeping me aflame.
Keep me here for someone's sake, I know it isn't mine.

Drowned in worldly contention, stifled and restrained.
I look calm but I'm barely contained, and something's got to give.

Pulled up by dawning awareness, illusions shatter in the light.
I feel the breakthrough but I'm so afraid, what will happen to me?

The Prophet

The Prophet (by John Ludi as the Quiet Earth Orchestra)

I'm here all around you,
my essence surrounds you.
But temporal trappings confound you,
and nothing I impart can ground you.

You toil in vain to define me,
wondrous words to confine me.
Your prayers and totems can't bind me; 
with tools like these you'll not find me.

The world is an illusion 
where you dwell amidst confusion,
that dulls all resolution, 
turns conviction into dissolution.
The spaces between moments beseech you. 
The singularity entreats you.
The universe has so much to teach you…
but it may never reach you.

God (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

World Without Words 2

An Eventual Ascent (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

One of several ambient pieces from an upcoming album of instrumentals.

World Without Words

The Thing In The Woods (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Sits On The Seashore And Ponders Eternity (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Buys A Guitar (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Adopts A Couple Kittens (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Meditates In A Cave (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Contemplates The Interlocking Cycles Of Time (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

Another uptempo instrumental piece from the upcoming album, World Without Words 2.

Optimism Terminated

Optimism Terminated (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

Last in a series of songs for the upcoming Quiet Earth Orchestra album.

Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

The Thing In The Woods Orders Chinese Takeout (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

This older one (2004) seems pertinent.

There's a hole in the world that's filling up with dark.
There's a hole in our hearts where the world has left its mark.
There's a void in the mind of the man with the gun,
there's a coldness in the place where his soul has come undone.

There's a bomb-wielding maniac bred on rage and hate
making plans and praising god and hiding at the gate.
There's a white collar criminal who will lie and cheat and bribe
to sell the filth of progress, brand new poisons to imbibe.

There's a hole in the world that's filling up with dark.
There's a hole in our hearts where the world has left its mark.
There's a bible-thumping simpleton polishing his guns
waiting for a Jesus who will never ever come.

There's a legion of robotic youths dancing to the beat
of depravity and illness and a future in retreat.
There's a nation full of empty souls existing to consume
every toy and trinket and ticket to their doom.

Enter the Beast! All hail the Beast!

There's a hole in the world that's filling up with dark.
There's a hole in our hearts where the world has left its mark.
There's a oil-soaked president with blood staining his hands,
knowing that a hungry world will increase it's demands.

There's a rising sense of panic under the commercial glaze
that gnaws at your assumptions of brighter future days.
There's the sinking feeling you will get as find you've been betrayed,
it's the outrage of the hopeless who know that they have all been played.

Rise Above or Fall Below

The Beast of Armageddon

Buy on Bandcamp

The Beast Of Armageddon

Part of a larger theme, lyrically; The Prophet speaks to the masses, telling them to "slow down', get off the treadmill, and think for themselves...out of sheer gratitude, the masses try to kill him. Same old story, basically.

Look up from your duties and peer beyond the haze,
do you see the years that you've spent running the a maze?
Are you a bit part player on an empty stage,
attending to the ritual and pacing in your cage?

Look all around you now and tell me what you see:
millions of voiceless machines pretending they are free
whose every fleeting notion is written as in stone,
fleeing from the uncertain and fearing the unknown.

All eyes upon you as you waver on the edge.
All jaundiced observations as you stare down from the ledge.

So whose life are you living and by whose unspoken rules?
Why did you pass your future into the hands of fools
who trod down well-worn paths yet never found their way?
Why do their listless echoes inform your life today?

All eyes upon you as you waver on the edge.
All jaundiced observations as you stare down from the ledge.
And sudden gasps of shock as their eyes raise to the sky,
as you throw off your chains, spread your wings and fly!

An angry crowd has gathered, they're calling out my name,
a mob of naysayers who shoot down every claim.
Behind them stand all those who forged all their chains,
(keeping it all the same).

I back away to flee but there's nowhere to turn.
Smoke wafts in the breeze as my books start to burn.
All the words now just forgotten, mocked and spurned.
(The pattern always returns.)

And as I struggle, to a platform I am led,
with handcuffs on my wrists and a hood over my head.
I call for help but the fickle faithful have all fled
(they only value you when you're dead).

Slow Down

Slow Down (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra

The "Prophet" flees from the crowd attempting to lynch him and finds himself deep in a forest where he mystically merges with the woods around him and vanishes from sight.

Here, here, in the woods where I fell down,
words, words, trees whisper sacred sounds.
Hum, hum, cicadas call from all around.
Run, run, so tired of running. Try, try, so tired of trying.
Will, will, the will has left me,
I sit and watch the breeze bustling the trees.

Calm, calm, leaves and limbs ask me to stay.
Rest, rest, just eat and drink and play.
Sleep, sleep, let the world just fade away.
Run, run, so tired of running. Try, try, so tired of trying.
Gone, gone, the world can't find me...
they're making new regrets, and soon they will all forget.

I'm falling down into a nest of green and brown.
I'll rest my weary soul amidst nature's simple sounds.
I will abandon man as all his cities burn.
I will merge with this land, never to return.

Cicadas (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

In which The "Prophet", having enraged the growing mob by entreating them to think for themselves, is almost lynched...but deftly escapes as WW3 begins as a bunch of drunken morons start pummeling each other.

Standing on the platform, mere seconds from the noose,
they've written words on my chest (and misspelled most of them).
A list of all my crimes for all the mob to see,
like the crime of being aware
and the crime of paying too much attention.

Trash flies from the mob, it skitters at my feet.
A bottle hits the ankle of the thug restraining me.
He does a little dance while bellowing in pain,
and loosens up his grip just enough for me to fall.

I fall to the platform (which buckles under my weight),
while the thug runs to his target and punches him in the face.
The punch becomes a fight, the fight becomes a brawl,
the brawl becomes a riot, soon to become a war...I run away.

The Madness Of Crowds (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

A comical little pseudo-classical piece that ends the saga of The "Prophet".  Originally I was going to do a sequel to this album to continue the story, but I got pissed off that so many people torrented the thing that I quit music for a few years...and now I'm too old and tired and it doesn't matter as the world is basically ending. Cheers...

Prophets Theme (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

A truly genre-defying ballad about romantic conflict (but could be about ANY human conflict, by extension). It has elements of Folk, Rock, Prog and a bit of Metal, but could best be musically described as “Other”. Some brilliant guitar work by Greg Kutcher on this one.

We’re entrenched, convicted, embattled and upset.
Cursing vows as mistakes as joy fades to regret.
We lift our heads skyward and mock the silent stars
as wills collide and night divides the sum of who we are.

(C) I don’t want to win if winning means losing you.

Count the hours of weakness against the minutes of restraint.
Take the pulse of honesty as it grows slow and faint.
For every accusation, a snide sneering retort.
We’re full of bad intentions and lies of last resort.

(C) I don’t want to win if winning means losing you.

You’re standing there and I’m standing here,
were you inside of me you couldn’t be more near.
We choke on the words that we both want to hear,
self-righteous, paralyzed, made mute by rage and fear.

Victory is tragedy and certainty is doubt.
Two directions left to us, leading in or out.
You extend a hand to mine (iron fist in velvet glove).
I relent and draw you close, pay the humbling toll of love.

(C) I don’t want to win if winning means losing you.

Win (by Soft War)

I turned 50 a little while back. It has messed with my head...so I did the usual thing and wrote a song about it. It's a song about becoming invisible.
lyrics
I Was Never Here

After all this time I've become a ghost...empty vessel, discarded host.
The young don't notice the pale gray men, just as single-minded as I was then.

It's like I've disappeared, faded and unclear...maybe I was never here at all.

My ambitions are old and tattered. My desires no longer matter.
My great dreams all lay in dust...corroding in my heart of rust.

Once a player upon the stage, now a footnote, a crumpled page.

Everyone just looks right through me, everyone just walks on by.
It seems that now I'm just a phantom, a silent specter with empty eyes.

It's like I've disappeared, faded and unclear...maybe I was never here at all.

I'm a song that's almost completed. Slings and arrows left me defeated.
Every line but the last verse sung. I once was vital, once was young.

Once a player upon the stage, now a footnote, a crumpled page.

Everyone just looks right through me, everyone just walks on by.
It seems that now I'm just a phantom, a silent specter with empty eyes.

I'm still here, I call.

I Was Never Here

A song about the somnambulistic many.
lyrics
Sheep

Sheep, sheep, go to sleep,
watch TV, there's fast food to eat.
A case of beer makes the day complete...

or maybe a football game.
I'm amazed you can even spell your own name.

Sheep, sheep, suspicions creep
Ugly words, something quiet and deep
that says that what's been sown will soon be reaped

Barbarians behind the gates
I regret to inform you that it's too late
did you think that your mindless ease
could keep you from slavery and disease?

© You never thought about tomorrow
now it's far too late to feel sorrow
as the world it crumbles around you
and your vanishing freedom astounds you

Sheep, sheep, I hear you bleat
I hear you cry and entreat
as you're lined up and shot
against the concrete

walls of a fascist state
with no one left to commiserate
the death of a common fool
a happy consumer so happily ruled.

© While you were neglecting tomorrow
some monsters led, the rest followed
and created a world quite like hell
with no space left for much else.

You're medicated and tamed
and you'll fall into place when they call your name.
And there's no one else you can blame
it's what happens when everyone thinks the same.

© So cling to the thoughts that they feed you
and repeat the cliches as you need to
and march down the road that they've paved
with the ground up bones of your fellow slaves.

Rage

Sheep

Weightless Saint

He's falling up, come hold him down.
Why must we keep him around?

Is it his belief or his piety,
or is it something else entirely?

Unclever soul, a dullard's eyes.
Is he a witch...a thing of lies?

Sacred mystery or hyperbole?
With his vacant stare what does he see?

He foams, he shouts...stumbles about.
He can't be trained, he's barely sane.

Oh, but he can see and know eternity,
God bestows those gifts unevenly.
A false history? Religious sophistry?
Or a rough-hewn mind setting a soul free?

Only a glimpse of farther shores and deeper tides.
Only a hint of hidden meanings.
Just out of reach of solid certainty:
a dream where promise wakes up empty.

Mistakes Have Been Made

11 - Weightless Saint

This is my new, and possibly final, album. I consider it the best work I've ever done and if I never make another album I would be happy to say that it all ended on this particular note.

This Time

Down through the ages go you and I.
On history's pages, hints of you and I.
So who are you to me, this time?
And will I recognize you this time?

We nearly pass upon the street, pigeons fleeing from our feet,
the wind troubled and cold, yet I feel within my soul
the spark I know as you burning in someone new...
a heart that beat with mine in other places, other times.

Through peace and through warfare traveled you and I.
To dirges and fanfare, listened you and I.
So once more descending into these times.
Once more the veil's rending into these times.

We embrace as lovers do, all else fading from our view
for a moment we are free from the world's calamity
but around us is the sound of it all breaking down
and distant sirens cry as the missiles start to fly.

Through cycles and stages...tried you and I.
Were we saints, were we sages...was that you and I?
But we spoke and stopped nothing, even this time.
Bigger fools for that knowing, even this time.

Again I gaze into your eyes, fire starts raining from the sky
and the air grows thick with smoke and we begin to choke.
We came, we saw, we wept as all around us slept
But we'll pass with conscience clear from our final moment here
credits
from Mistakes Have Been Made, released March 22, 2020
John Ludi wrote, sang, played, engineered and produced this song

This Time

08 - This Time

Go Along to Get Along

You tried to find your way in this sad and wicked place
but all your good intentions got thrown back in your face.
Everyone eventually gets pulled into the race,
gets swallowed and digested if they don't keep up the pace.

Climbing up the ladder in this sad and wicked time,
how to get ahead is all that's on your mind.
Honesty and ethics abandoned on the way...
the payout makes it worth it: you're a richer man today.

Take the money and run, you whore. Grab what you can, find the back door.
Presidents do it, so it's ok. Deal with your conscience some other day.

[C] And go along to get along, it's what's done...right or wrong.
Don't rock the boat and don't make waves, while you're digging your own graves.

Now you are a leader in this sad and wicked land
raking in the rewards of all your greedy plans.
Rolling in the spoils of all that you could steal,
and no one dares to ask you, how do you really feel?

There is no center, nothing can hold and all your futures are bought and sold.
It doesn't matter what the rich folks do, 'cause just admit it, you'd do it too.

Do it for the money all that awesome money 
tasty yummy money happy happy money
you're worthless without money 
bad people don't like money 
what's wrong with them anyway?
They should get with the program.

Go Along to Get Along

06 - Go Along To Get Along

I'm under the ice, trapped within your frozen soul
The quiet voice of your spirit pure and whole
I'm eternity laughing at your minor mortal role
The twist of fate that shutters all your tiny goals.

Daylight daylight...throw off your chains and step out
Outside outside...the warm summer rains quell your drought
Rise up rise up...constraints are all of the mind
Waken waken...this illusion where all are confined

In your core are stars, down where the frost can't grow.
The ageless spark, those embers still do glow.
Below all the weight and the ever-mounting toll,
Waiting for sunrise to escape this sorry hole.

Daylight daylight...throw off your chains and step out
Outside outside...the warm summer rains quell your drought
Rise up rise up...constraints are all of the mind
Waken waken...this illusion where all are confined

To the sleepers in their nests, to the slumbering soulful best
in the breaking of the day, another path, a clearer way.

To those silent amidst the din, to those who never join in
to the ritual puppet's dance, the contrived consensual trance

To the ones who watch and doubt as the many revel and shout
in praise of their conditioning and their owner's positioning.

Frozen Souls

05 - Frozen Souls

So it's come down to this apocalyptic abyss,
where sentience of any kind can barely exist.
And we find ourselves led by hearts that are dead...
for the suffering they cause, not one tear do they shed.
Their addiction to greed, pushing perpetual need:
the base desires of stunted minds where vultures do feed.
It's all led to a hell of buy and sell, buy and sell,
where everyone's reduced to a pale broken shell.

The dead eyes of the young whose futures are hung
upon the endless lies of a million forked tongues.
On their flickering screens, visions sick and obscene
forge their souls into something small, dark and mean.
And the hearts of the old, once adventurous and bold
slowly molder in the remnants of the principals they've sold.
For once you give in an avalanche will begin,
and then you'll find that YOU are why those pricks always win.

Take back your brave new world and book me a flight to Jupiter...
'cause I don't wanna be human no more: everybody here's gettin' stupider.

The blind rage that you feel. The “Art of the Deal”.
The inexorable turning of a big f**kin' wheel.
And the strong eat the weak, the wise grow flaccid and meek,
and the rich feast on all the fruits of the power they seek.
If there's a future at all (after all of this falls)
it will not be if we heed the same darkness that calls.
The human heart it yearns for the path that does turn
towards the place where all good virtues bake, boil and burn.

Everybody Here's Getting Stupider

04 - Everybody Here's Getting Stupider

Your spirit whispers like a draft in a moldering tomb.
You eye the dusty suitcase lying in the corner of your room.
To don your wings once more and pretend you are free,
as Autumn's wind again compels you to flee.

The parade of novelty for now keeps you engaged,
but the night leaves you pacing an empty stage.
Though the faces may change, the motivations remain the same.
All the traveling you do takes you to the same old place.

It's like thousands of writers coming up with the same old play:
the dream's consistent though the food has a different taste.
After a while you outpace even your favorite regrets...
you're a wandering ghost in a world of marionettes.

Every time you think you've found a home
it's just a place to fly away from.

The Traveler

02 - The Traveler

From the album The Quiet Earth Orchestra, 2008.

HISTORY ENDS HERE

Faith favors false answers as sham prophets sew errant seeds.
Confusion grows as a cancer, an unthinking anarchy breeds.
The masses pray for a deluge or for the fear to dissipate,
but nothing offers them refuge or a balm to alleviate
the symptoms of the condition, the soul's malnutrition
or man's response to creation: violence and stagnation.

Attention slaves, attention fools: poison in the well!
Reclaim the caves, lay down your tools (poison in the well).
And sulk in pain, broken and bruised (poison in the well),
For you must live with what you choose (poison in the well).

Learned words beg for attention under the din of sensation.
For the few blessed with retention, some small private elation.
But this is hardly salvation for the mob who howl and tear
apart their civilization and then puzzle at the smoke in the air
rising from the ruins and embers of a future dismembered.
The just desserts now tendered of a history not remembered.

History Ends Here (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

(This particular song is a song sung by the Earth to humanity...an angry plea by a besieged planet.)

Greg: All Guitars.
John: All other stuff.

	
You think you're on the way up,
it's clear to see I'm headed down.
Will you extend your hands to mine
and catch me before I hit the ground?
You can't see to fight your nature,
the siren song of your selfish seed.
Your lust for all that glitters,
the faded line between your wants and needs.

(C) Your goodnight song of waste and wanton greed,
the trough of plenty where you endlessly feed.
The fate of sea and sky so surely sealed:
billions of scars that go unhealed.

You are a plague, you spoil everything you see,
and you forget that you all live off me.

Angry Blue Planet (by Greg Kutcher & John Ludi as Soft War)

UPDATE 1/19/2021 (Decided to remix this a bit brighter). Another piece of ear candy from an upcoming instrumental album.

Optimism Unlimited (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

Another bit of upbeat instrumental ear candy for an upcoming album of such. Reminds me a bit of the sort of thing Michael Oldfield did in the 80's, at times.

Winter Cedes to Spring (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

MUSIC FOR THE THINKING FEW.

(NOTE: I only repost songs I REALLY like...and they usually don't involve an 808, misogyny or Autotune...and at my age I'm FAR more interested in quality connections with listeners than going "viral". ALSO: mostly an aging rock/folk/prog/indie guy...can't really judge or really relate to Hip-Hop, Auto-Tune and other more modern styles...sorry.)

John Ludi is a musician/singer-songwriter/cultural relic with a diverse and "arty" array of influences and lyrical interests who was "Indie" before the term even existed. Working outside of the music industry by choice has given Ludi the ability to release songs of a level of lyrical depth that are anathema to the current culture.  Ludi lives off-grid in a yurt in the woods of WI and finds the materialistic priorities of our civilization incredibly wrong and destructive.

John Ludi

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