Manafonistas

Nicht alle Tage gelingen in den Augen des jeweiligen Betrachters. Diese Feststellung ist auch schon in Liedform festgehalten worden; ich erinnere einen Countrysong, der die Binse festhielt, dass manche Tage Diamanten, manche Tage aber Steine waeren. Und was hilft uns in solchen Momenten, wenn wir feststellen, dass „man“ (wer?) uns einen gebrauchten Tag verkauft hat? Ich fuer meinen Fall habe festgestellt, dass Liedtexte, denen man in der Vergangenheit fast gar keine Beachtung geschenkt hat, manchmal etwas Troestliches haben. Zumal wenn man diese lyrics als Zeichen der Anteilnahme mitgeteilt, sozusagen von aussen herangereicht bekommt. Per Mail zum Beispiel. Die Songtexte sind die Texte zu den beiden Teilen von „Pigs On The Wing“ von PINK FLOYD vom Album Animals. Und was soll ich sagen: die Texte passen.

„From light we come, and to light we go.

From the light of this understanding I moved against the human aberration of War
and followed its tribal roots down into the dark bowels of recorded history and beyond.

Never did I imagine such an incredible journey.“

Stan Hall (1936 -2008)
 

We Are Hungry Men, the 6th track on the first David Bowie album, starts off, typically, with firing sparks of genius. „Here is the news …“ it goes, in an a voice that takes its caricature of RP beyond caricature or even satire and into a place that its target deserves: nowhere.

RP was the accent adopted by English broadcasters in the middle of the 20th century. RP – received pronunciation. It’s an infinitely stupid term, as is enacted by the artist in those 4 words. RP is meant to be the speaking voice of reasoned thought, but was in practice a vessel for the 20th century’s colonial (soon to be very postcolonial) insecurities. Here is the news. Fuck the news, and its bombast. Tomorrow is yesterday. Phonemic subversion becomes diphthongal intifada.

The lyrics that follow examine catastrophism, ecologocentrism, Victorian patricianism and globalisation with humour and a lightness of touch. This is the news: the news is not news but history. And history is just facts but not the vibration/iration of everyday life.

The far future tells us so – a look to the relatively near past for intimations of the eschaton throws up just as much as a look to yesterday, tomorrow or anytime else in any epoch of any lithosphere.