Time

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.

Recorded on Apr 13 1977
Released on "The Peel Sessions" in 1995
BBC radio sessions 1974-1988

So here we are, alone -
our children have grown up and moved away.
living their own lives, they say...
it all seems very strange to me.

I don't understand their ways:
our children amaze me all the time
and I often wonder why they make me feel
so sad and suddenly old.

Now we're left with an empty home,
from our nest all the birds have flown for foreign skies.

Peter Hammill about the reunion of Van Der Graaf Generator, meeting his band mates at funerals, the problems with David Jackson and going on as a trio!!

Question: About your band ,through your career, it seems that you always come back to the Van Der Graaf Generator…
PH: Eventually yeah.

Question: In a way, why?

Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices, now dumb:
what have we become? What have we chosen to be?
Now, all history is reduced to the syllables of our name -
nothing can ever be the same now the Immortals are here.
At the time, it seemed a reasonable course
to harness all the force of life without the threat of death,
but soon we found
that boredom and inertia are not negative,
but all the law we know
and dead are Will and words like survival.

Arrival at immunity from all age, all fear and all end....
Why do I pretend? Our essence is distilled

Premiata Forneria Marconi Live In Japan 2002 was released in both a 2 CD and DVD edition. The 2 CD edition contains 2 new studio tracks including a collaboration with Peter Hammill who wrote English lyrics and sings Sea of Memory.

The Sea of Memory
If only we remembered
as much as we forget....
The past’s a distant ocean
we can’t go back to yet.
We wait down in the valley
and till the soil by hand
feeling the weight of water
built up behind the dam.

Left and right, up and down, head over heels
that’s the only way that we know

So
if it's just so then
where is it now when
I find the moment
uncertain?

Broken water pail -
no moon in the water,
try to hold it now.

So
I want to hold on
reflection's all gone,
no ego - so.

Broken water pail -
no moon in the water,
try to hold it now,
broken water pail,
hold me in the moment,
no more ego now.

I would
drink the dregs of daylight,
break the bread of consciousness
and dream:
dream day for night,
nightfall around us,
waking, dreaming,
awake to the dream.

Broken water pail -
no moon in the water,

General discussions about "Time", a major theme in pH/VdGG work and beyond.
if I only had time...