Wednesday, February 01, 2006

a teleplay, various (un?)related songs

-AFTER LIFE-

(Close up, middle aged man's face)

VOICE-OVER, YOUNG GIRL'S VOICE: Daddy, what happens after you die?

(Man's eye blinks. Fade up soundtrack is a Raymond Scottesque Electronica World of the Future Circa 1964. Montage of images of the world - Busy streets, third world schools, scyscrapers and elevators, events, entertainments, games, movies, busy freeways, airplanes, peasants in fields and paddies, people in lines, in offices and stores, watching TV at home, making love, taking showers, getting married, dying at home in bed. Soundtrack locks into an electronic, pulsing tone, about heart's rate)

(Close up, man's eye. Eye blinks, Middle aged man is dying in bed at home, surrounded by family. Cut to view from bed, family circled ominously around, slowly darkens, eyeblinks flash briefly to black)

VOICE OVER, YOUNG GIRL'S VOICE HEAVILY DISTORTED (reverb, delay, flange): After you die?

Eyeblink fade to black)

(Scene of family gathered around the bed while Man lies dead. They collapse to the
ground and lie still)

(Montage of images of the world. The wedding party, bride and groom, preist and parents, photagrapher and ushers and guests in pews collapse to the ground and lie, still. A woman in a shower collapses, pulling the curtain down around her. Zoom into a close-up on the drain. There is no blood. People making love collapse atop one another and lie still. People lie dead in their chairs in front of of TVs showing old sitcoms still rolling along. People in lines, offices and stores fall to the ground and lie still. Peasants collapse in the fields and paddies. Stewardesses collapse in the aisles and passengers loll dead in their seats. Long shot rolling up the aisle of the plane, then pulling up and out, to the jumbo jet from above going into a steep dive. A stuttering montage of terrible freeway disasters. Dead movie theater audiences face a reel that jams and burns through. On the football field the receiver who has leapt to catch a high pass crashes to the ground, followed a moment later by a half dozen men collapsing around him. Actors collapse onstage. At some offical ceremony all participants collapse to the ground. Elevator doors open and close, obstructed by the by the still forms of dead passengers. All the children in the third world school lie still on the ground or half in their seats. The crowded street is silent, littered with fallen forms. Scene halts, skews, and burns through to white)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The following songs were featured in a spoken/sung performance by at
the Second Instantaneous Response Project.

DOOMSDAY

How it's gonna go the whole world will so
slowly turn more tainted and poisonous
one day we'll wake to find everything pickled in the brine
of our wasteful and profligate detritus

How it's gonna go, one enourmous blow
when we finally go over the edge, push all the buttons
in the night while we sleep peaceful
death death cruising in from above us

How it's gonna be we'll learn to hate technology
before we know it we'll have torn down all we've made
before we know it we'll be gathered 'round the fire
fighting with sticks and stones and scavenged blade

How it's gonna wind up, we'll finally dry the vine up
use every drop and dollop of goodness we have left
having reached a pinnacle of useless industry
we'll whither away and dissapear for lack of daily bread

how it's gonna face us, the comet come to erase us
the asteroid the rogue planet flying through the void
Doomsday, our final end, under the cloud the cycle turns again
world without end nothing created or destroyed

How it's gonna go, everything will just go more and more slow
we won't notice it, we'll be slower too
it'll all just wind down over years until it finally stops
there won't be a damn thing we can do.

THE LAST NIGHT

The oceans rise raging but the moon is receding
All the rules are broken now the moon is red the moon is bleeding
Stand by my side now my love this is the last night
Everything is ending here and everything will be all right
Locusts swarm down from the sky and crabs boil from the sea
This is armageddon this is epiphany, catastrophe
What if nothing ever happens anymore from now on
I turned to ask you but I couldn't see where you had gone
What if I spend the last night alone
Waiting by the telephone

The stars are phasing out into confusing folds of space
I have a look of idiotic concentration on my face
There is a violent current circling the globe
I've got a nasty schism brewing in my frontal lobe
And the oceans rise raging but the moon is back
One more bloody harvest then the whole thing fades to black
I saw smoke signals in the hills
One last hurrah before I'm motivating dafodils

I found you once and I'll find you again
The hat is white and the star is tin
I'll rescue you
That's what I'll do
The balloon is ready to launch
We'll cross the canyon if our hearts are staunch
My spider friends are watching our backs
It's time to jump the tracks
And go into the great unknown
Go where only the wind's blown

THE LAST SHATTERED VERSE

To the last shattered verse, a hollow muttered curse
I swore myself to pushing on
This universe of broken symmetry, this lousy existential mystery
What a bad idea it seems to me, what a sad song
To be so languid and unsure, just like the man in the mirror
What difference do I make, fate gets her take
And we all end up as nothing in the end
you and I we die the same my friend
What a stale paradigm, there's a mountain so we climb
Led by the nose by any possibility
It makes so little sense, everything falls out of sequence
Just because I see it is it my responsibility
The year's end will not end it all, we've quite a distance left to fall
And all in all, all of creation, me and my big imagination
Is such a small small thing a little paper boat
Tossed on the Big Sea try so hard to stay afloat

THE NOTHING BOX

Being implies nonbeing implied
all the usual philosophy tricks were applied
as usual
A vessel was created out of
wasted time to contain the order
that disperses without reason
or rhyme: transcausal
The ancients of days long gone
spoke of it in image and song it
had been gone a long long time
So they say
But all who are illuminated
agree that the nothing box
was created agree and have stated
It will be found and opened
some unlucky day

PENTAGON FILES (day of inception)

After all the stones we laid down
are torn asunder
long after every one of us
is buried deep down under
they will mine what's left of our files
and wonder
at the foolish lives we used to lead
They won't care about our spreadsheets
or the way the market fared
They will only wonder how so few
stories and songs were spared
Won't it be a sad
commentary on the lives we shared
huddled in the shadow of the
Pentagon Files


this is what is up with this.

No comments: