Incoherence


      


      

Home

Back to Lyrics

Back to CD

Top of Page

(When Language Corrodes)

And when language corrodes all our faculties falter and blur. Nobody knows how our tongues got so swollen and furred. What truths are there left to be told when we're all lost for words?

(Babel)

Words upon words stack the tower of Babel brick on brick on straw on clay but a whispering stirs and the structure's unstable when all the scaffold's stripped away. We're ever quick to aver that we are ready and able but we can't say what's coming, come what may.

By definition self-obsessed we strive to make ourselves plain with words that pass the acid test with passive thought in train.

Words upon words, fiction, folly and fable, each pregnant pause a dead giveaway... ploughing on undeterred as the sell-bys expire on our labels though at length we'll have little or nothing to say it would be too absurd to spend life all agaze at our navels - oh, we've got such limited time to go on and explain.

So, running off at the mouth, we all get carried away uncertain when it all goes south if we mean what we say.

If we mean what we say....


(Logodaedalus)

Logorrhea independent of the brain not a moment to reflect only time to wick up the gain what was he thinking of and why did he dream he could convey a bright idea? While his tongue was wagging he forgot to use the space between his ears.

Logodaedalus with the cunning of a fox paint him devious in the corner of the room, pop Pandora out of her box. What is he on about and why are his arguments so needlessly arcane in their brilliance? He's close to appearing more than slightly inane with his crooked logic and his dog-eared dictionary close to hand.... I don't think he's got it but he's insistent that we're going to understand his complete precision; in the end he's certain that we'll all agree with his definition... an obsolescent word from 1663.

That says it all for me.


(Like perfume)

Once spoken, words perfume the air like woodsmoke, like a breath of self that's no longer there. Such confidence, such half-baked truth... the sound of distant voices mocks the hubris of youth.


(Your word)

Burnt the bridges, burnt the tread; the sodden syllables are turned. You can't take back what you said when you give your word.


(Always and a day)

Always and a day we swore in common vow that tomorrow we would stay the same as now, the same as now.

In every future verb we deny our own "Until"; this the promise that we serve - we have time to kill: I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will

always and a day.


(Cretans always lie)

It's impossible to trace these words in carbon paper trail for just as Zeno's arrow flies the snake is eating its tail.

And in contradictory style the soldier and the steer attend around the mark of the five hundred all in charge of a friend.

"The Cretans always lie" claims the Cretan. The Cretans always lie.

A kiss the gift from hell light, the poison pillow, dear... and as we gag on it translation smacks of something like

"Cretans always lie" claims the Cretan; "Of Cretan stock am I, am I Cretan?"

Why don't we hook this old short circuit to the value of Pi?

"Cretans always lie" claims the Cretan; "Of Cretan stock am I, (so) am I Cretan?" And Zeno's arrow flies, through the ether.

Come on...let's see how the paradox flies.


(All Greek)

Fried up the brain with rhetorical questions dictionary games and conundrums ear to ear. When we say what we think do we think what we're saying's missing a link, inconsistent in idea?
(in internal stage whispers
wordless the script
getting lost in contradictory talk....)
Losing the thread (in a set of stage whispers) "It's nothing"... (he said) If I meant that it would say it all. (Spoken, the lines are misshapen....) speaking my mind but the mind that thinks out loud's not thinking straight at all.

All my ideas formed entirely without words speechlessly, you get the picture?

ne, oxi, oxi, endax' hai, iie, iie, redact....

All greek to me, all in double dutch phrases, cacophony of linguistic dismay, orotund talk and the sound of my voice is fractured and forced; I can't get out what I mean to say, parroted lines all misshapen... speaking my mind but the mind that thinks out loud is close to blown away.

And when ideas come entirely without words their purity is unalloyed even to ourselves unspoken is unheard and so we try to give them voice but languages have all evolved to meet the needs of every individual culture so with every syntax that we press them to we see their essences adulterated...

ne, oxi, oxi, endax' hai, iie, iie, redact....

(Call that a Conversation?)

Oh, spit it out, there's no way we'll see eye to eye - my simple truth is your warped confusion; as off different planets we spin eccentric jive.

I don't remember what I said I don't think you do either.

Slippery of tongue though you claim my speech may be all of the words you've been putting in my mouth just flatter to deceive.

I never said the half of that you're utterly mistaken call that a conversation?

Yeah, you said it, all my meaning, quite misread it... this conversation let's forget it now.

I can't believe what you just said call this a conversation?

Let's call it quits, let's just say it's a measure of the distance between our worlds.

I don't remember what I said, I don't think you do either; you make what you will of meaning - call that a conversation?

More likely just the space between words when the meanings have all changed.


(The Meanings Changed)

From the first word that I said to the last some strange echo remains imprinted in the walls recorded in the vaults we talked and tunneled through but the meanings have all changed.

Because of all I said you began to regard me as strange until with some relief you suspended disbelief I tried to tell the truth but my meaning was all changed.

I saved one final word to pay off this long sentence in spades but what I thought I said was patently misread. The spoken word is broken here and in between the two of us the meaning is all changed.


(Gone ahead)

We bite off our tongues while chewing the fat; though the fire in our lungs is celestial our delivery falls flat. Would a time come to be silent? Oh, we never spoke of that.

We talked out of turn in the school of hard knocks; although willing to learn from experience it still comes as a shock when the time comes to be silent... one by one the jaws all drop.

The voice is still clear in my head; it's the last word in monologue.... close-up, interior, night.

mmm...

The voices alive in my head are all tongue-tied to silence now.

It's the darkest of moods, it's the cruellest of jokes that this facility I used, once so fluent, is cut out at a stroke. And the time came to be silent as the core connection broke.... absurd ineloquence, my own words on which I choke.

Swallowing deep on the thread, so much I'm losing now, so many things left unsaid and the voice I've been using is gone ahead.


(Power of Speech)

Always we shout to be heard as though our voices could express the sense of sentences deferred and of lessons learned, of storylines unfolding, of the truths of our innocence and shame, of life, the very breath that we are holding, of our very names. We shoot our mouths off in adventure, we ram the ammunition in the breach, blow up the flowering of sense with the power of speech.


(If Language Explodes)

And if language explodes in our faces like shrapnel all self-defence is blown away.

In the end this reasoning's sound: how can we be found if we're lost for words?

Oh, still in the search for the words....

I've said my piece, I'll take my leave now, breathe not a word of my disarray.

Ssh.

All of the words have flown away....


      

H


      

Home | Back to Lyrics | Back to CD | Top of Page