A SEA SONG, PART 4
Written and
recorded on location in North Ryde, Sidney, Australia in 1989.
(C) (P) BY PAUL HALL, 1987
This section of the song warns about sophism and teaching
for profit, how it cannot deal with reality because reality
is too painful for spoiled students.
^^ : lemmings, refuse to learn lesson, message of the sea, something for nothing supposedly against the rule, sophist's teaching price, lesson applies to me, barnacles, sleek hulls, yacht, chemicals for the paint, destroy the shells, instinct suicide, long long epic song, about the sea, return to life, contagious poison, financial woes
A SEA SONG, PART 4
Written and recorded on location in North Ryde, Sidney, Australia in 1989, By Paul Hall.
(c) (p) by Paul Hall, 1987
Run, run to the shore.
Run into another world
for evermore.
"Is it natural?"
Said the scientist.
The tourist was baffled there.
They saw them leap over the cliff;
the lemmings.
That's a message of suicide.
They want to end.
When a creature has no hope
and they cannot pray,
they have the sadness of the storm
but not the lessons
The tragedy of the lesson
that they refuse to learn
etched in the other side.
And the emotion
never flows
so on to an endlessness they go.
I said to her,
"Why desire you
to take your life,
when you could loose it
in service
to deliver men from strife,
when you could give
in daily existence,
choosing the deep sea
to the sand?"
But she went home
not seeming to understand
that I gave her the message
of the sea
and not that of a man.
Did she see as I wept
beside the carpeted step?
Because my whole life has been spent
to that intent:
To get out of the way
and give the people
the cool spray;
the adventure
of the new life
of the future's truthful say.
Yes, but that wasn't what we were taught in school.
They said that something for nothing
was strictly against the rule.
So they lower their head like bulls
rushing on
in fierce dread
of something
that they cannot understand.
They destroy
what they cannot understand.
Can the ocean itself
be destroyed
by man?
I leave you with that question.
He's trying to destroy
what he cannot understand.
Two kinds of prisoners
on the earth
looking out between the bars:
One kind sees only
the mud on the ground,
but the other kind
sees the stars.
Everywhere
there are lessons to be learned
beyond what the sophist's teaching price
could have earned.
Everywhere
the lessons
we all should see
and then say: "That lesson applies to me".
And the waves
of the tide
cannot be denied,
you'll return to their side
one fine day.
And the lessons unlearned
are like stripes that are earned
through the sun's
blistering burning.
Efficient,
things that work,
are not for man.
The things that really work
are beyond the rocks and the sand.
They're in forever
that lies ahead.
They are for those
who have learned to live
and not for the dead.
To keep the barnacles
away from their sleek hulls,
the yacht owners will pay
for chemicals for the paint
that destroy the shells
of the life below.
An entire bay
an be destroyed
by the paint on the hulls of two small boats.
Sea gulls
gliding by over
the factory sky.
What are they doing there?
The fish are put in cans,
delicacies
on the table of man.
And the sewage pipe
from the factory
emptied beside the sea
and the sea gulls did eat
what was there.
But then,
in man's business world,
the fierce tides of lies did swirl
in their eddies and currents.
And the factory,
like the hull of a beached ship
bleaching in the sun
closed down
like a shell fish
that's left it's own shell to drown.
No hermit crab
would take it's hulk anymore.
And the sea gulls waited
by the sewer pipe.
No more
would the fish
tripe
float past.
And they died.
They all died.
It was instinct suicide.
And the lessons go on
woven into the fabric
of a long, long epic song
about the sea.
Destroyed by something inside you,
inside me.
We need to leave
and return to life.
To life.
The shellfish
beneath the two boat hulls
now slick of barnacles,
received the contagious poison
as it drifted past their lives.
And the shells,
once smooth and vibrant
became twisted by the lies.
Man will destroy what
he doesn't understand.
He builds his factories
on the sand
of business lies
and financial woes
and on to a beached death
that sort of thing must go.
No foundation in forever.
Only lies so clever.
No future,
only past.
Structures that will never last.
No breath inside the hulk,
only television's bulk.
What's it for?
It's for the store,
for the instinct suicide.
To turn into a whore
and not a bride.
To stay in papered rooms
and leave the seashore's side.
They leave their teacher's side.
How did they end their lives?
What Huxley called the "Soma" suicide.
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Copyright and Phonorecord (c) (p) 1987 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.