friends

Live In Moscow - May 18.1995
Peter Hammill - vocal,keyboards,guitar
David Jackson - flutes,saxophones
Stuart Gordon - violins
Manny Elias - drums

From TheTjana on YouTube

North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry...
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.

East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun:
the winds came gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered;
we were at peace, and we cheered.

We walked along, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.

Here's the lost boy with the brittle smile,
plastered panstick on his face,
making himself up; for a little while
all the fragments will remain in place.
We are only what we manage to retrieve
out of memory
(Who do you think you are?)

Inside, it's hailstorm visibility
transformed by outer confidence and charm:
step up to take responsibility,
step down to keep the pieces of identity calm
and the moment we believe that we got it all in place
is the very moment when the cup overflows,
out of memory.

(Who do you think you are?
Where did you say you'd been?

North was somewhere years ago and cold:
Ice locked the people's hearts and made them old.
South was birth to pleasant lands, but dry...
I walked the waters' depths and played my mind.

East was dawn, coming alive in the golden sun:
the winds came gently, several heads became one
in the summertime, though august people sneered;
we were at peace, and we cheered.

We walked along, sometimes hand in hand,
between the thin lines marking sea and sand;
smiling very peacefully,
we began to notice that we could be free,
and we moved together to the West.

When I began I was full of altruistic dreams,
believed in princes and princesses, kings and queens -
now I find they're all human inside,
all bitterness and pride,
so why shouldn't I be like that too?
It seems that I've forgotten all I tried so hard to learn;
it seems there's not an ounce of love or trust
anywhere in the world.

Friends - they're all harbouring knives
to embed in your back out of revenge, or spite,
or indifference, or lack of other things to do -
in the end just who's going to be a friend for you

You lay your plans, I take them as they come,
I understand: we dance to different drums.
It's not in any schoolbook,
you're here to teach a lesson to us all...
we play by different rule-books.
What you say, what you do,
they're such different things, which is true?
Now the telephone rings, Mephistopheles calling...
Forty pieces for each lie you've told
I hope your linings as they all unfold are silver.

Once we were friends in our idealist days,
still, let's pretend, it's funny in a way
that now our friendship's token
you like to say I owe you everything -

"If I close my eyes I can pretend
the best is still before me, the worst is at an end.
Time for goodbyes to the audiences that adored me;
they never realised
just how much I came to despise all their eagerness."

Famous last words,
made in jest, overheard,
is that your best testament?
Or are you coining a phrase
just to see how it plays
when you're at your wits' end.
Famous last words,
to the last you'll self-serve,
what a waste of your breath.

When you close your eyes will you pretend
that nothing bad has happened, that we are still close friends?

Always we're too young to understand
that life is neither cruel nor fair,
at random or well-planned.
So we stride along the shoreline
while our footprints in the sand
are washed away and then
say "Can I begin again?"

But where you come from's who you've been
and try as you may your debts all stay unredeemed
(maybe that's why they seem)
when all history's as distant as your dreams
you close your eyes and count to ten,
say "Can I begin again?"

Every action, every passion,
every rational retraction, every breath a start....

Here's the lost boy with the brittle smile,
plastered panstick on his face,
making himself up; for a little while
all the fragments will remain in place.
We are only what we manage to retrieve
out of memory
(Who do you think you are?)

Inside, it's hailstorm visibility
transformed by outer confidence and charm:
step up to take responsibility,
step down to keep the pieces of identity calm
and the moment we believe that we got it all in place
is the very moment when the cup overflows,
out of memory.

(Who do you think you are?
Where did you say you'd been?

My friends, I never really thought you'd go,
but, then, we know that's the way it happens here.
Now time is like cat's cradle in my hands:
I gather up the strands much too slowly.

The refugees are gone...they take their separate paths,
obliterate the past, figures in an ash shroud.
Susie, I guess you're on your way to be a star,
but I don't know where you are;
the only time I seem to see you is on the TV
It's so easy just to slip away....

Mike!
It's a year or two since I've seen you....
I might have dropped you a line
if I'd had time
or the will.