All light enters me, unfettered, unbound and free.
My ego retreats in fright, to an unconscious twilight.

A bursting forth has begun, I begin to see all things as one.
A spark in me catches fire, unchained of all earthly desire.

All time and space flows in me, I dissolve in infinity.
Universal perception and sight, I merge with the source and the light.

Words and symbols lose their meaning, 
the universe opens wide.
A burning light opens wide, 
erasing my ego, my pride
and in this oncoming tide, I succumb.

Time and space expand and fade, 
my comprehension, it grows.
I'm free from the ebb and the flow, 
I am the above and below
dissolved in this mounting glow...I awake!

The Quiet Earth Orchestra

Singularity

Singularity (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)

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)

Optimism Terminated

Optimism Terminated (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

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

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

The album this song is from is now a FREE DOWNLOAD at:

https://ln5.sync.com/dl/4a539e890/24z6h6py-z3s4zk8b-ye5yx3k6-4e5ws7uu

They threw accusations at the air over our heads, 
we responded with sanctions, fuel for the fire we fed.
We declared an embargo, they filled the canal with mines. 
We ignored every caution, they crossed over all lines.

Feed the beast and warm its belly, 
watch it grow and grow.
Sing its praises and trumpet its virtues 
as it drags you all down below.

We called in an air strike, 
they stopped their shipments of crude. 
So we unleashed the full fury of wars unholy brood.
With no intention of winning, 
every life lost was lost in betrayal, 
but the office fills up with contracts 
when futile rockets fail.

Feed the beast and fill its belly, 
watch it swell and bloat.
Give it blood and give it bodies, 
give it tanks, napalm, and boats.

I don't expect compassion from you... 
so you won't get any mercy from me.

Imperialism and conquest: 
history is but one endless fight 
for the fool-hearted folly, 
for the financier's delight.
For who cares for tomorrow 
when the blood of today brings you power? 
They will forfeit our future 
as the dreams of the damned fully flower.

Feed the beast and drown in its belly: 
a victim of your own designs.
Pernicious and bloated and greedy and craven, 
as the hope for the future declines.

Feed the beast and stroke its belly, 
for its comfort, profit, and delight.
Then pray to your false gods and run for cover 
as it blots out the last rays of light.

Soft War

Futile Rockets Fail

Futile Rockets Fail (by John Ludi & Greg Kutcher as Soft War).

(Be) still my beating heart. I know I’m not what you intended,
and I hope you’re not offended by my attentions and my intentions.

For try as I may , I can’t forget you.
And try as I may, I still let you in here

(c) where the angels don’t dare
but the devils swear and play their secret serenade
keep me up all night and day dreaming of you.

Still my beating heart. I know there’s a great gulf between us and that sorry Cupid has never seen us
when wistfully I gaze at you and it seems to me you look that way too.

I wish I could just ignore you, but I wish I could implore you into here

(c)

You make me wish I was younger or richer (a presentable picture).
You make me wish I was somewhat less somber and less prone to ponder
a vision as lovely as you, but there’s naught for me to do but dream of you.

And try as I may I still want you in here
(and back and forth I pace)

Hell's Laughter and Heaven's Ache

Secret Serenade

Open your eyes to another day, 
all possibilities in which to play.
But you'll deal your deals and plan your plans 
while the creases form upon your hands.

The second hand spends round and round, 
taxing your days without a sound.
You plot your future and log your past, 
ignore the fact that nothing lasts.

All the lines you've drawn align in time and space, 
as random chances slip silently away.

(C) Pain is a seed. Some things can't be.

The hours fall, you fill the page, 
the days depart, you pace your cage.
And listless is your soul in your mock security, 
it cries and kicks and screams in your dull maturity.

The years drone on, you waste your time 
filling out forms, standing in line.
Live by rules that someone else has set... 
squander every opportunity you get.

Father Time is laughing horribly at you 
and all the freedoms you'll eternally eschew.

Fate

Fate (by John Ludi & Greg Kutcher as Soft War)

And so you move beyond your time,
beyond this world; the mortal line.
And visions come to add the sum
of all you've done...all you've become.
All your mistakes, all your heartaches,
what pain you've caused, your moral flaws.

To rise above or fall below.
To grasp the world or let it go.
The visions pass, your first and last,
all in between, your every scene.
What joy you've brought, wisdom you've sought,
your clarity and charity.

Or Fall Below

I am in free fall and obsession,
I am a fool who knows not what to do.
Hear my silent pained confession,
the one who could not find his way to you.

Me, I'm just an echo
of the man I longed to be.
So far away, a stranger in so many ways.
A fading rumor, an empty phrase.

I'll put you off until tomorrow
and hope that some chance for us remains.
But that future has grown hollow,
choked by regrets that slowly stake their claim.

You have got my number,
you know, the one you never call.
My image fades, I've never held your smiling face...
now you're aglow in a distant place.

(C) This sense of denial, the roads I'll never walk again.
Our funeral, my trial, my hopes all bruised and bound and chained.

I'll wallow in inept confusion,
and pray for time to take me away
from my excuses and conclusions...
wasted years full of empty days.

We just never happened.
Nowhere is the nothing that we shared,
just hollow space, an unlit candle,
an empty vase on a table love never graced.

Sense of Denial

Sense Of Denial (by John Ludi & Greg Kutcher as Soft War)

Submerged, playing the opening strains of our own dirge,
sinking into an abyss of faith and words, submerged.

But don’t close the coffin yet, even though it’s a fool’s bet
that we might wake long enough to see that we’re sleeping.

Patterns, this reoccurring act of failing,
this ending up at bad beginnings, patterns.

Some see the start of it while cursing the end of it,
yet all have feet of stone climbing the ladder of time.

Time’s hands are choking you, fate’s plans a joke on you,
while you live to let live, tripping on gifts that you cannot give.

Forget, losing the reason why we built this
empire of science and illusions and defects, forget.

We all are chained to it, our souls are owned by it,
losing the questions as well as the answers.

Kali Yuga

It’s all going to go away
so use up all you can today
Hoard all the manna of progress you find,
suck it all down ‘til it makes you go blind

You were drinking your ambrosia and feeding on the fat
as the dinner bell of plenty started ringing flat.
You were basking in the sweetness of luxury and leisure,
wading in the excrement of unconscionable pleasure

Buy a thing, another thing, and then some things to house them,
eat the leaves and gnaw the roots and suck the juicy stems.
Frivolous and carefree, living second to second…
(the skeletal hand of the future now beckons).

Spend your way to nowhere with debts you’ll never manage
Soulless and rapacious and mindless of the damage
Driving towards the better life (always one purchase farther)
down a road paved with all the lives our countries bartered

Driving by in my SUV.

The worlds is a playground for your appetites,
as long as it feels good it must be right.
And little dark people are working so hard
so you can max out your fat credit card.

You have hungers and desires the past could not imagine
and you don’t see how your consumption fans the fires of famine.
Images flicker on the screen that speak of desperation
caused by the sick desires of a fat decadent nation.

Watch them die on my big TV.

An old band tune from an EP from 1988. 35 years ago...how'd THAT happen?

Watch us work, watch us work these words.
Act our lives out; subversive roles rehearsed.
Some men toil, toil within their faith.
Someone has to, to delay our fate.

Carrying water, water to the flames…
this our resolve, without coin or fame.

A brilliant light, a light of pure insight
within our minds, burning past the blight.

This our cross, this our cross to bear
for all is prone to disperse in the air.
Knowledge stands wilting in our hands
as darkness falls over the face of man.

One Day it Will All Come Down

The Obligation

The Obligation (from 1988, Soft War...full band)

Open the blinds, tell me, what's that sound?
Never mind...pass the wine, I'm to be found
casting about aimlessly as those waves do rise,
whistling a happy tune to greet our demise.

For my part I think I'll get something to eat.
It would take more than a holocaust to get me to leave my seat.
I'm just another consumer watching Eden turn to hell,
so don't ask me to be the one to ask "Hey Nero, what's that smell?"

(c) Who are you calling complacent, 
haven't I done my fair share?
I don't need to make statements 
and by the way, I don't care.
I go to work every day, my taxes I pay, 
so leave me alone and go away.

Close my eyes and go to sleep, it's all the same.
Thinking's too hard and I'm too tired and I'm not to blame
for whatever happens, it's the system...it's not me, and I'll be ok as long as I still have my beer and my TV.

Hell's Laughter and Heavens Ache

The Complacent Song

Such a time, such a phase. 
Such a memory a scent can raise.
Pictures assault me, they damage my eyes. 
Voices surround me with love and with lies.

I hear you cry, a forlorn child, 
then watch you rage, eyes flashing wild.
And even my hand raised as to fall 
couldn't convince you to pause or to stall,
you played my heart and soul.

(C) Play this heart and soul.

Bite and scratch from morn' to night, 
day to day and fight to fight.
I'd beg and I'd plead for a moment of peace 
or failing that, to just be released,
you played my heart and soul.

Sap my strength, crush my will, 
then circle 'round for the final kill.
Tell me the truth, was it always your mind 
to be so deliberate, to be so unkind?
You played my heart and soul.

Time moves on and seasons change, 
and soon your claws fall out of range.
As I'm walking on you're looking so small, 
and if I walk further you're nothing at all.
You played your heart and soul.
Your own heart and soul.

Supplication

Supplication (by Greg Kutcher and John Ludi as Soft War)

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

I have got nothing and you want to take it away
you'll feed off my labor til I meet an early grave
I'll work forever so all of you wealthy can play
you'll find what I've hidden and tax away all that I've saved.

I'm down here and you're up there
and I can see your mansion from here...it's pretty clear.
I'm in debt and underpaid
with nothing for the effort I've made...and I live in fear.

You educate me with just enough to work your machines
you entertain me with the stunted, profane and obscene
you've taken my mind and my will and still you want more
in the system you've designed I'm little more than a whore.

Born to be nothin, born to be a slave
dirt under your boot heel from cradle to the grave.
I labor along with millions so you can up the ante
I'm invisible to you and I live in a shanty.

I'm down here and you're up there
and I can see your neck from here...it's pretty clear.
I've been your tool and I've been played
but I've got a rope and a torch I've made...and you should live in fear.

When this whole thing falls apart I'll be come lookin' for you
without your billions they'll be nothing that you can do
but for now you can sleep and contentedly dream
but rest assured someday you'll be waking up with a scream.

Shanty

You’re in the desert, the hot hot desert,
but it don’t matter ‘cause you’re dead.
And it don’t matter just what desert,
‘cause it’s all desert and it’s dead.
No one’s there to remember where you bought that t-shirt
or your last two-week vacation, they’re all dead
But you got to party and you had spending money
And you were kinda special, and now you’re dead.

There used to be oceans full of plankton and fishes,
now they’re full of plastic and they’re dead.
And there were verdant meadows with animals aplenty
only fading books remember what is dead.
The end, it started slowly and then it came on quickly
the masses, they were clueless…now they’re dead.
The experts, they did warn them…but no one paid attention
And politicians dithered, and they said

“Mistakes have been made”.

Some people made a fortune while others toiled and suffered.
One thing they have in common? They’re all dead.
The wealthy had their money and lawyers did their bidding
they all just kept on lying, now they’re dead.
The planet they did break it for trinkets and tokens
and everybody bought it, now they’re dead.
The last rich man expired on a mattress full of dollars
in a mansion cracked and crumbling, and he said:

“Mistakes have been made”.

Mistakes Have Been Made

12 - Mistakes Have Been Made

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.

11 - Weightless Saint

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

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

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

We thank you for your contribution,
but the time is due for a new solution.
Your reward for services rendered?
Your needs ignored and a system dismembered.

You stumble around barely conscious
while we aim for the stars.
So we'll just replace you all
with robots and self-driving cars.

(Chorus)
Pulling the plug. Yanking the rug.
Cleaning you bugs out of the whole damn thing.
Cleansing with fire, the widening gyre...
you filth that aspire to be like us, the Kings.

Wise and free (you really are neither).
You peasantry, we've filled you with either
despair or hate (and fake populism).
Now take the bait of the call to fascism.

Useless eaters bred as slaves,
unaware of your captivity.
Dumbed-down and disaffected
and mired in disunity.

Kings (The Depopulation Song)

01 - Kings - The Depopulation Song

Here we are watching everything unravel,
all the wonders of life now fade before our eyes.
Nature’s certainties now frail and sick and weary,
all her unities now falter fail and die

Grasping hands rend the web of things connected
our feeding frenzy and our thirst for more and more
The deserts we produce host the tombs of our grandchildren
who will reap the bounty of the warnings we ignored.

Implosion and erosion
Contortion and corrosion.

Debate and disavow and justify inaction
as the storm gathers above our busy heads.
Pretend the clouds are not looming on the horizon
shut out the visions and the fleeting face of dread.

Bandcamp

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)

Simple (by John Ludi as The Quiet Earth Orchestra)

Poor soul without a place to call home
plagued by the nagging echoes of the past you've disowned.
Poor soul all alone in the cold
with a drug-addled vision of the future you've sold.

Be in the world but not of the world.

Poor soul working day after day
with all of your worries and those debts to pay.
Poor soul, lines on your face and your hands
reflect the endless procession of mundane demands.

Be in the world but not of the world.

Rise above or fall below...

Poor soul with all your money and power
with your meager view of the world you devour.
Poor soul with all your status and fame,
with the hidden hurts of an ego inflamed.

Be in the world but not of the world.

Rise above or fall below...

Rise Above

Optimism Unlimited (Quiet Earth Orchestra)

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.

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