o meu quarto

[ à espera do país das maravilhas ]

banda sonora:

sou dos que preferem um nocturno amargo de peter hammill 
à doçura fugaz do falso sol que se esconde ao fim da manhã

Letters in pencil, some of them as heavy as lead,


as dated as carbon, as black as coal, but burning as red.


Clues faintly stencilled: the message, though leeched, is unbled,


as secret as marble - as young, as old, as living, as dead.


And always that laugh
 that comes as though it's from pain:


though I'm lashed to the mast 
still it hammers round my brain.



Laughter in the backbone,
 laughter impossibly wise,


that same laughter that comes
 every time I flash on that look in your eyes


which whispers of a black zone
 which'll mock all my credos as lies,


where all logic is done 
and time will smash every theory I devise.


And the hour-glass is shattered
 only by the magic of your touch


where nothing really matter… No, Nothing matters very much!



So the siren song runs through the ages, 
and it courses through my veins like champagne;


and with all the sweet kisses of addiction 
it's calling me to break my bonds again.



Future memory exploding like shrapnel,
 some splinters escape on my tongue,


some of them scar comprehension...
 beneath the scab they burn, but the wound becomes numbs.


And always the song draws me forward, 
rejoicing in the search and the prayer,


bored with all but the mad,
 the strange, the freak, the impossible dare.


Still your laugh chills my marrow
 till I embrace it on my knees....


Oh, when the mast becomes a flagpole,
 what becomes of me?



What becomes, oh, what becomes of me?

pus-me a pensar numa banda sonora para aquela frase de miss plath (retirada de "ariel")
e dei com este velho assassino, o que vive no fundo do mar - mas mora dentro de nós.



So you live in the bottom of the sea,
and you kill all that come near you...
but you are very lonely, because all the other fish
fear you...
And you crave companionship and someone to call your own;
because for the whole of your life
you've been living alone.

On a black day in black month
at the black bottom of the sea,
Your mother gave birth to you and died
immediately...
'Cos you can't have two killers living
in the same pad
and when your mother knew that her time had come
she was really rather glad.

Death in the sea, death in the sea,
somebody please come and help me,
come and help me
Fishes can't fly, fishes can't fly,
Fishes can't and neither can I, neither can I...

Now I'm really rather like you,
for I've killed all the love I ever had
by not doing all I ought to and by leaving
my mind coming bad.
And I too am a killer,
for emotion runs as deep as flesh
and I too am so lonely, and I wish that I could forget
We need love,
We need love,
We need love...

parou de chover, mas subsiste um gotejar, lento e pausado, no parapeito da janela.
essas gotas de chuva marcam um ritmo disfarçado que, não sei por que razão, me faz recordar o começo desta grande canção de peter hammill.



Here at the glass - all the usual problems
all the habitual farce.
You ask, in uncertain voice, what you should do
as if there were a choice
but to carry on miming the song
and hope that it all works out right.
Tonight it all seems so strange - my spirit feels rigid,
me body deranged;
still that's only from one point of view
and we can't have illusion between me and you,
my constant friend, ever close at hand -
you and the undercover man.
I reflect: 'It's very strange to be going through this change
with no idea of what it's all been about
except in the context of time...
Oh, but I shirk it, I've half a mind not to work it all out.
Is this madness just the recurring wave of total emotion,
or a hide for the undercover man,
or a litany - all the signs are there of fervent devotion -
or the cracking of the dam?

It's cracked; smashed and bursting over you,
there was no reason to expect such disaster.
Now, panicking, you burst for air,
drowning you know you care
for nothing and no-one but yourself
and would deny even this hand which stretches out towards you to help.
But would I leave you in this moment of your trial?
Is it my fault that I'm here to see you crying?
These phantom figures all around you should have told you,
you should have found out by now,
if you hadn't gone and tried to do it all by yourself.

Even now we are not lost; if you look out at the night
you'll see the colours and the lights seem to say
people are not far away, at least in distance,
and it's only our own dumb resistance
that's making us stay.
When the madness comes, let it flood on down and over me sweetly,
let it drown the parts of me weak and blessed and damned,
let it slake my life, let it take my soul and living completely,
let it be who I am.

There may not be time for us all to run in tandem together -
the horizon calls with its parallel lines.
It may not be right for you to have and hold in one way forever
and yet you still have time,
you still have time

poucas vezes uma letra de uma canção é um poema assim, 
um retrato tão denso numa reflexão sobre uma relação - 
mas esse é um dos muitos dons de peter hammill.

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 negatives, 
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
 and all familiar taste is now drained
 and though purity is maintained it leaves us sterile,
 living through the millions of years,
 a laugh as close as any tear... Living, if you claim that all that entails is
 breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, 
spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down 
and ultimately passing away time
, which no longer has any meaning.






Take away the threat of death 
and all you're left with is a round of make-believe; 
marshal every sullen breath
 and though you're ultimately bored by endless ecstasy
 that's still the ring by which you hope to be engaged
 to marry the girl who will give you forever - 
it's crazy, and plainly
 that simply is not enough.






What is the dullest and bluntest of pains,
 such that my eyes never close without feeling it there?
 What abject despair demands an end to all things of infinity?
 If we have gained, how do we now meet the cost?
 What have we bargained, and what have we lost?
 What have we relinquished, never even knowing it was there?






What chance now of holding fast the line,
 defying death and time
 when everything we had is gone? 
Everything we laboured for and favoured more
 than earthly things reveals the hollow ring 
of false hope and of false deliverance.






But now the nuptial bed is made,
 the dowry has been paid; 
the toothless, haggard features of Eternity
 now welcome me between the sheets
 to couple with her withered body - my wife.




 Hers forever, 
hers forever, 
hers forever
 in still life.

lançado em 1971, o album "pawn hearts" dos van der graaf generator contém duas pérolas de brilho perpétuo e uma delas é "man erg", seguramente uma das primeiras canções da minha vida.

oscilando entre uma balada e um tema sinfónico e com um grande poema como letra, quarenta anos depois (quando o sr. hammill resolve volta e meia reunir a banda de sempre) continua a ser inquietante ouvi-la, sobretudo quando tocada ao vivo pelos (agora) sexagenários...

 

The killer lives inside me: yes, I can feel him move.
Sometimes he's lightly sleeping
in the quiet of his room,
but then his eyes will rise and stare through mine;
he'll speak my words and slice my mind inside.
Yes the killer lives.
Angels live inside me: I can feel them smile...
Their presence strokes
and soothes the tempest in my mind
and their love can heal the wounds
that I have wrought.
They watch me as I go to fall
- well, I know I shall be caught,
while the angels live.

How can I be free?
How can I get help?
Am I really me?
Am I someone else?

But stalking in my cloisters hang the acolytes
of gloom
and Death's Head throws his cloak into
the corner of my room
and I am doomed...
But laughing in my courtyard play the pranksters
of my youth
and solemn, waiting Old Man
in the gables of the roof:
he tells me truth...

And I too, live inside me and very often
don't know who I am:
I know I'm not a hero, well,
I hope that I'm not damned.
I'm just a man, and killers, angels,
all are these:
Dictators, saviours, refugees in war and peace
as long as Man lives...

I'm just a man, and killers, angels,
all are these:
Dictators, saviours, refugees...

esta é a canção que associo sempre ao fim da minha adolescência: estava a acabar o liceu quando comprei o álbum «still life», um dos discos que mais me marcou.
não sei se é pelo piano e voz de peter hammill, se pelo sax de david jackson ou pelo poema, mas ainda hoje acordo muitas vezes a ouvi-la em mim - e nunca me cansa... é isso um clássico?

Searching for diamonds in a sulphur mine, leaning on props which are rotten,
hoping for anything, looking for a sign that I am not forgotten.
Lost in a labyrinth of future mystery, tracing my steps, all mistaken,
trusting to everything, praying it can be that I am not forsaken.

I wait by the door, wondering when you will come and keep me warm.
I pray for the end of the night, hoping the light will still the storm
which presently entraps me;
helpless sea-monster stranded on the shore, marooned in an ecstasy of waiting,
I yearn, although knowing that I shall dive no more in the tide already racing.

My lungs burst to cry: “Finally how could you leave me here to die?
I freeze in the chill of this place with no friendly face to smile goodbye -
how could you let it happen?”

How could you let it happen?
Dreams, hopes and promises, fragments out of time, all of these things have been spoken;
but still you don't understand how it feels when I'm waiting for them to be broken.