After a trip to Greenwich, and a visit to the museum there - I started thinking about the Figurehead, and its kind of grim aspect... how it will butt rocks and bob, and be constantly tormented by the waves... I kind of thought this makes for a good metaphor.

The Figurehead

I started writing this song shortly after watching the latest Studio Ghibli film, "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya". The film is a beautiful exploration into the simplicity of happiness. It made me think a lot about the competition we face everyday. I thought I would therefore tell a similar narrative, one where someone appears from the waves to only find endless forms of competition. The final lyric, "It's always my toughest cells against your toughest cells, who break apart and destroy themselves", is used to illustrate the naturalness of competition.

In Wicker Baskets

We are Industry

Prime-Mover

Running to Stand Still

We Are Industry

In Your Night Armour

Asleep

For Calm (Take These)

Girl From the North Country

When I consider what you mean to me
It is a fact I’ve come to realise
That you’re my closest link to paradise
Despite what wise men try to make us see.

They caution us against idolatry
And tell us that we should not jeopardise
Immortal life for anything that dies:
And not to be bemused by mere beauty.

It seems ungracious not to take delight
In day because it turns so soon to night.
Eternity is always here to stay
It’s only you and I who fade away.

You are my here and now my present tense.
I hope you will excuse my diffidence.

Love does not always find a way: but gives
A promise that it cannot be destroyed:
It’s even killed and buried: yet it lives
In every heart in which it’s crucified.

Love is sheer joy. But has to suffer you
And me. It can’t avoid its Calvary.
Silent. Unseen. Transparent, pure and true,
Rich in its own reward of poverty.

When we can find no one to whom to turn
On nothing but on it can we rely
To consume us, or else we can but burn
In just the fire we persecute it by.

Love cannot help but always wish all well.
To deny it, is to plunge into hell.

R.D. Laing

Ti-Gene

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