Also Eden - Think Of The Children ================================= "Those who would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin) Think of the Children ===================== When the world for me was new Yesterday was upside down Summer skies were always blue And feet would scarcely touch the ground The gate to heaven was a wheel With spokes of thought that made no sound And everything you'd wish to feel Was ever present in the round... and round... and round... Adventure playground - every street And each day we danced anew We felt the mud beneath our feet The grassy scent of early dew Did we live far away from home? Was planet earth a foreign land? How have we lost what we once owned And locked the cuffs on our own hands? Think of the children! - Is all you will hear Think of the children! - It's a mantra of fear Think of the children! - If down that road you go Then "Think of the children!" is all you will know If you consider all the dangers You've encountered in your time Every chance that you were here no more Every final line... Sometimes thoughts can cut as razor blades Circles vicious in our minds Turn the wheel the other way Or get left behind... Now locked up tight inside a cage And unaccustomed to the light Our children victims of the age Of the imaginary fight We spin cocoons of spider thread A superstructure of the night Succumbing meekly to the dread The cold "What if?" of careless fright Think of the children! - Is all you can hear Think of the children! - It's a mantra of fear Think of the children! - If down that road you go Then "Think of the children!" is all you will know Hiding In Plain Sight ===================== We're hiding in plain sight Have no need for walls Take a good look around you You'll see nothing at all There's an urgent, pressing problem Occupies your hearts and minds See it every night on your TV Read about it in The Times Whilst somewhere deep behind the lines In view but lost to sight Lie myriad atrocities That never see the light There's a big gap in the market We developed it ourselves Pushed and prodded the demand And now it's flying off the shelves It's a test of comprehension every day Distorted through a mirrored lens I-spy the puppet master staring back at me The actors dancing in his hands There's a theory on the web today Cast as conspiracy and fright... Cast as conspiracy... Define conspiracy... Go on, define conspiracy... Oversight ========= They say the camera never lies And question what you have to hide It all depends upon your point of view The secret is a feint, disguise To pixellate, re-analyse Developing and processing the true Night after night The watcher sets his phase In artificial light All outside in his gaze He's seeing red on a lonely street The shuffle of your shoes The profile of your body heat Will rise out of the blues They say the camera never lies And then question what you have to hide It all depends upon your point of view Their secret is a feint, disguise To pixellate, re-analyse Developing and processing the true Day after day The listener scans the wires For signs that will betray Your undisclosed desires He'll read the thoughts that you expose And search between the lines Extrapolate and diagnose A star amongst the signs You see the camera never lies And so they question what you have to hide It all depends upon your point of view The photographs are faked, disguised Interpolate, re-analyse, Develop and re-process, there's your "truth" They're all in the machine We're oiling the machines Pandora's box of dreams Cijfers ======= This constant stream of information The memes that ebb and flow Describe the perfect circle Tangentially to grow A world of steganography Membranes shimmer, glow Out on the edge of your perception The picture is the snow The Greater Game ================ Sitting in the wings As the actors play their roles The invisible magician A prompt for wayward souls He's a watcher, he's as cold as ice But he was born to pull the strings The world of puppets dances on his stage Interpreting the tunes he sings Yet they still believe they have control Those true disciples of the night Lords of their own dominions, masters all But merely pawns within the fight Day by day Micromanaging the strategy Lost in the detail The subtle clutches of their vanity Move their own pieces in the greater game Manipulate and turn the tide The shadow watcher sees them all the same He doesn't even need to hide Distorts the movement of the butterflies Precipitates the hurricanes Pulls out the pin and ambles nonchalantly away He's lost to view again He shakes the re/ai(g)ns The puppets reel amok Forks lightning through his vein/anes And the proxies ground out the shocks Stealth ======= We trust ourselves to guardians From our first waking days Delegate authority Prerogatives we waive For those who know what's best for us Will keep us safe from harm We drift along the sliding scale Make sail past the alarms Stealth Crawling in under the wire Stealth Careless with what we desire Sometimes it's hard to comprehend The way on down the line Sometimes it's difficult to see The outcome through the time That mists between the present And our futures all arrayed We cannot make assumptions Of the players and the played Stealth Crawling in under the wire Stealth Deeper we sink in the mire The instruments of power That we formulate today Will pass from hand to hand And may be dropped along the way When you entrust a guardian Remember in their stead Comes another and you cannot know What goes on in their head Dream Without A Dream ===================== It all began in innocence An illusion of the truth We manufactured for ourselves From the arrogance of youth We built a stage to play upon To bridge an ocean cold and blue Sail across that briny sea Soar into skies anew The call of opportunity Lured by passion, strong and without bounds Blinded to reality We watch the pretty lightning dance around Do we find ourselves waking In a dream within a dream? Hand in hand as friends We venture on and take the eye out of the team We gave our freedom willingly Bought into the common ground Ignored the peril with a smile Our house a castle, safe and sound Now the walls are closing in Closing in from all around Take shallow breaths of liberty With freedom nowhere to be found So we find ourselves waking In a dream without a dream Let the nightmares end We seek control when all there's left to do is scream The end of the relationship Shields up and markers down In no-one do we ever trust The wide blue ocean sees us drown All we wanted was security A place of comfort in the night All we had to lose was liberty But we took neither from the fight 1949 ==== I awoke one morning In 1949 To a sea of half-remembered faces Tugging at my mind They assaulted me with clipboards That the ministry gave out And the voices in my head were pleading "What's this all about?!" Drift in and sharpen the lines Drift out of focus, unwind My companions of honour Came from valleys black with coal Every citizen a subject Fit for government control Tick the boxes on the checklist Feed the sour little pill Take our medicine and like it It's a struggle for free will Tune in and soften the lines Tune out the nightmare, unwind And the street outside, a river Of humanity and rain Is a goal for us to struggle Daily, hourly to attain As the coats push one door open There's another to behold And a transport going nowhere Through the valleys, through the valleys of your soul Fade in and feel the divine Fade out of focus, unwind Tune in and soften the lines Tune out, unfocus, unwind Nurse, there's something wrong I really don't feel very well at all... And the street outside, a river Of humanity and rain... As the coats push one door open There's another to behold And a transport going nowhere Through the valleys, through the valleys of your soul Drift In Drift Out Tune In Tune Out Fade In Fade Out Tune In Tune Out And I awoke One afternoon In August two thousand and ten Think Of The Children II ======================== Spin up the spokes and gild the wheels Send kites up soaring in blue skies A generation primed in real To feel the fear yet still to fly For if all innocence is lost Discarded weakly with a sigh It will be we who count the cost Of living bleakly with a lie Think of the children - but guard them not too near Think of the children - don't let them drown in fear Think of the children - the values that you sow So think of the children, give them the space to grow ======== Why I chose not to put the entirety of the lyrics in the booklet, by Rich: First and foremost, I think it's too difficult to read a lot of lyrics in a CD booklet, and even when it is possible, it's difficult enough that it distracts from the listening experience. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wanted to use a handwritten-style font; my original idea was to hand-write all the lyrics for inclusion - in fact I did hand-write most of them, scan them, and then decide that I needed to use a font, due to the constraints of the CD booklet format. If you then add in the pictorial nature of the booklet - something that I also felt was very important, as I didn't want a "typical" booklet - that further reduces the available space. The second reason was that, as a lyricist, I like people to take their own meanings from lyrics and not over-prescribe for them - the classic individual example on the album is Dream Without A Dream - and there are many lyrical threads running through the album that are interwoven but aren't necessarily linear - so what I've tried, in this respect, to do with the booklet, is to bring out some of the most important themes, but allow the listener to link them for themselves, how they deem appropriate. The listener isn't missing a single story by not having the lyrics in front of them because there are a number of stories going on simultaneously and I actively want people to work out for themselves what they are, because that's what I enjoy myself (Deadwing is a great example of this). There are other reasons - not least that I feel that my diction on the album is, with a couple of exceptions (e.g. the word "guardians" in the first line of Stealth) such that you can hear pretty much everything I'm singing anyway. But there's a related point, indeed it's related to my second point above too, that's reflected in the final stanza of The Greater Game ("He shakes the re/ai(g)ns...") - sometimes even the lyricist can't decide which of a double or triple meaning he actually prefers; they all apply :) I do have to confess to an oversight though - the link to these complete lyrics was supposed to be in the booklet, but I forgot to add it to the final artwork.