1. |
Timothy
04:50
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It happened that dark afternoon, a misty November 2014. The orange lights of the local library were welcoming all sorts of ghosts. The smell of silence and paper calmed down the few of us who decided to escape the fog.
I wasn’t looking for a specific book.
Just jumped across the narratives: the ancient, the old, the new, straight through history in five big steps, and on the left you have religions, on the right comic books. And then, straight ahead, a massive wall: essayistic tomes that try to explain the world.
Like a broken pixel on a white monitor, a small blue booklet stood out and drew me close enough to read its title. But the moment the first letter became recognisable, a hand touched my shoulder.
So I froze and suddenly turned around.
The man looked at me deeply in the eyes, but his frightened sight just went through my skull. His blue eyes were flickering beyond, before and after me. His Brit-pop mandala t-shirt was pumping out sweat. And he stuttered. He said something like: “hey, do you have a moment?”
“Sure,” I said. “Are you alright?”
He replied with a gesture as if to suggest going outside.
So I followed him through the doors made of old wood and yellow glass.
We sat under a porch but couldn’t see any further.
The fog became wet, dark.
He looked really distressed, you’d say sad and frightened, but without any trace of panic.
His red face was still, his hands were shaking.
I could have thought he was just crazy, you know? Would you blindly follow everyone in the dark? His eyes reassured me the moment I saw them. They gave me hope that someone wise used them to see something terrible.
And then his encrusted lips opened once again.
His voice felt like mist.
He said:
“This hyperobjectivity, it doesn’t come to mind
It touches everything you have, you thought that you could hide
It crosses ages from day one, since God was just a kid
It passes through the Universe, from Pluto to Madrid
You talk about it in your sleep, you read that it’s a lie
You wonder when, how could it be? You’ll see it when you die
Now brace yourself for what I’ll say, go home and tell your friends:
All life will disappear again the world’s about to end”
Na, nanana, na - na, nanana, na.
La, lalala la, lalai, lalai, lala.
Oh Timothy, Timothy spiegami perchè
Il mondo sta morendo, io seduto ascolto te
Mi spieghi della fine e canti di strane melodie
Chiudendo gli occhi piangi e balli techno litanie.
[Oh Timothy, Timothy, explain me why
The world is dying and i’m sitting here listening to you
You talk about the End and sing of strange melodies
Closing your eyes you cry and dance techno lithanies]
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2. |
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We rang the bell
A white gazelle
She came to tell us
That we’ve done well
We asked five whys
Addressed the skies
She closed her eyes shut
We grew up wise
She thought we could
(For sure we should)
Have taken care of
Her holy womb
She trusted us kind
For she was blind
She’d never think that
We’d fall behind
Just look at such a lovely beast
I wonder how good it could taste
Her skin as soft as mothers’ breasts
Give us a sip and leave the rest
Just look at such a lovely beast
I wonder how good it could taste
Her skin as soft as mothers’ breasts
Give us a sip and leave the rest, come here!
So down we went
The miasmic scent
Our thirst and hunger
For all things bent
We tried to bite
She stood upright
A blast of light stroke
Our eyes went white
Don’t run away you stupid beast
Why won’t you just give us a taste
Your skin and blood won’t be a waste
Don’t run away you stupid beast
Why won’t you just give us a taste
Your skin and blood won’t be a waste!
She waved goodbye
We yelled and cried
The youngest whispered
“You won’t survive”
She kissed farewell
Our nations fell
And through the ashes
Another bell
She waved goodbye
We yelled and cried
The youngest whispered
“You won’t survive”
She kissed farewell
Our nations fell
And through the ashes
Another bell
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3. |
Amber
04:00
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Here’s a quote from Slaughterhouse n°5, a book about the present, a book I really like.
“Why me? Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything?
Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?”
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim,
Trapped in the amber of this moment.
There is no why, there is no problem
Lingering on this endless process.
With lots of doubts, and lots of promises
Here we are again
Like a young trilobite whose fossil won’t tell
If it truly was made to sustain all that hell
Like a dinosaur skull who thinks of itself
Suspended between lime and mud and dirty clam shells
Like Ötzi the iceman, whose expression won't change
Like a badly stuffed saber-toothed, so frozen in rage
Like hand silhouettes who slap the bare rock
You growl and you swear to wear out the shock
Like rules made of clay in the British museum
Each cut is an action that stretches through eons
Like paintings and jewels, aligned for devotion
A glass case constrains their spellbinding potion
Like capitals and columns, wood thresholds and bricks
Like tourist resort islands, that float upon sticks
Like anything that neatly piles up derelicts
You’re part of a giant mega hyper structure but probably just a quick fix
Why me, why you, why anything, that’s true
Why me, why you, why anything, that’s true
Why me, why you, why anything, that’s true
Why me, why you, why anything, no clue
That’s true
Like photos of players all perfectly aligned
In albums of stickers whose blanks are to find
Each pack of new faces sealed up undefined
Its complete collection belongs to a mastermind
Like queens in a deck that hope to hold hands
Like domino tiles that aim to push back
Like a pawn in its black square, all proud in defence
You cheer and rejoy for what could come next
Like Heisenberg said, he wasn’t that sure,
The moment you look at it, you make it impure
Position, momentum, will hide and endure
Your intrinsic qualities are something obscure
Like atoms and bosons so fast but quite still
They don’t have a clue their host’s mentally ill
As part of a giant slug without living will
His memories are looping like a water mill
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim,
Trapped in the amber of this moment.
There is no why, there is no problem
Lingering on this endless process.
With lots of doubts, and lots of promises
Here we are again.
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4. |
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And the space-ship hits full speed smoke free
All the pines wave gently through the breeze
And the neighbours switch to channel twenty-ninety-three
When she leaves her pretty garden Richtung Pleiades
And the vultures croak songs for our Lynn
As she feels the light that slowly dims
When she falls into a black hole that goes on repeat
And the Earth resets its bones, its nerves, its pale old skin
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5. |
Beresheet
09:54
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In the beginning,
They said it was as big as a washing machine,
With a big blue star on it. Lots of lines, lots of angles.
In the beginning that machine fell where your great great great grandmothers would then build their golf club, but you can’t remember that.
In the beginning that fall didn’t do any damage, you know? Well, back then that crush couldn’t harm anyone really. Even if it crashed hard and loud. There was no fire. There was no sound. Only a big grey cloud of dust. Nobody saw or heard anything. Back then we couldn’t see or hear or even breathe.
The story of the falling machine became then an old chant your great great great grandmother taught us.
More or less it goes like this:
In the beginning there was no air
We weren’t there
That big grey cloud of dust that grew for days, well
A silent fanfare
In the beginning there was no sound
Grey slopes, caved mounds
And that little thing that crawled out without a scratch, hell
Had us spellbound
Well, many of them actually. “Hundreds and hundreds” they taught us.
And they crawled together, they ate together, they ate each other.
Until their hunger devoured the horizon.
At the end of the beginning they became the horizon.
When your great great great grandparents first touched the ground, they didn’t notice anything special. After all, we had been there only once, ages ago and no one remembers much about it. Long story short we really don’t know how it all started.
Anyways, in the beginning when your great great great grandparents arrived, a silver smooth surface covered their entire view. The machine that crashed was still there. It looked like an altar. Still as big as a washing machine.
And then the surface started to breathe. Those creatures swallowed your great great great grandparents. They swallowed them through their mouths as big as craters.
Inside their bodies there was air and water and plenty of living excrement.
You might feel horrified by the idea.
But they said that it was the moment we found our place.
And your great great great grandmother used to sing:
It’s been a very long time since something ate us
A long long time since something ate us
A very long time since something ate us
A long long time since something ate us
And it felt good, it felt safe. Those beasts didn’t do it on purpose of course. We became part of their life-preserving routine. We were part of their biological process, without the need to be swiftly decomposed for their survival.
We never understood why there was no catastrophe. We needed a catastrophe. We always do. Your great great great grandparents had no clue inside of those enormous beings; as they witnessed their own lives simply moving on in linear, unspectacular mediocrity, meaningful interpretations became obsolete.
We might blatantly say they just accepted being shit.
They had time to sing:
It’s been a very long time since something ate us
a long long time since something ate us
a very long time since something ate us
a long long time since something ate us
It’s been a very long time since something ate us
a long long time since something ate us
a very very long time something ate us
And hell, it just feels great
[Undistinguishable voices complimenting each other]
And inside those indifferent giants the old generations indifferently thrived.
There came the bars, the dance clubs, the golf clubs, the swinger clubs, the moon clubs. Our clubs floated with their matter and we wanted to homage those creatures. We really wanted them to acknowledge our presence. We’re here! Hear us clubbing and thank you!
Their enormous indifference towards what was inside them made us think they possessed a superior form of kindness: godly, other-wordly. We thought they were gentle. We thought they were smiling at us.
But they wouldn’t care
‘Cause they couldn’t care, oh
They couldn’t care
‘Cause they wouldn’t care, yeah
It’s been a very very long time since something ate us, we should say that.
The last time must have been at least 3000 years ago, maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter.
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