Tunes for Transition
Something a little different today – free music!
After a silent hiatus of several years without composing a note – justifying my musical alias “Samuel de Silentio” – over the last few weekends I’ve written and recorded (at home) a short album and posted it online for free download. Most of the songs are ‘simplicity’ related, so I thought some of you might be interested in a listen. Music is a very personal thing, I understand, so the style of composition and production won’t suit everyone, but perhaps curiosity might tempt some of you to take a listen. I hope you enjoy these tunes, written in the spirit of celebration and opposition.
The songs are listed below. Please feel free to share them with others.
- Getting and Spending
- A Shadow Stirs
- Two Lanterns
- All Else Preparation
- The Upside of Down
- Furor Poeticus
- Tunes for Transition
I’ve posted the lyrics to the songs below and the songs can be listened to and freely downloaded here. The music and lyrics are my own, except for the lyrics to the first song, which are a merger and adaptation of two poems on simplicity, one by William Blake (‘I rose up at the dawn of day’) and the other by William Wordsworth (‘The world is too much with us’).
I’d like to thank my musical collaborators Andy Gibson, Katherine Copsey, and Andrew Doodson for contributing harmonies and production advice on several of these songs. Thanks also to Haedon Smith for production advice. You guys are the best.
Finally, I would also like to thank the filmmaker Dave Gardener for selecting track two, A Shadow Stirs, to be on his Earth Day Fundraiser Album, available for purchase here. Please support Dave if you are able. He is producing an important film called “Growthbusters” due for release in a few months.
TUNES FOR TRANSITION – To listen click here. (N.B. track 1 is at the bottom of the page)
I rose up at the dawn of day
Get thee away get thee away
Prayst thou for Riches away away
This is the Throne of Mammon grey
Said I this sure is very odd
I took it to be the Throne of God
For everything besides I need
It is only for riches that I can bleed
I have Mental Joy and Mental Health
I have Mental Friends and Mental wealth
I’ve a girl I love and that loves me
I’ve all but Riches bodily
In the presence of Spirit night and day
It never turns its face away
This Spirit by my side does stand
And it holds my money bag in its hand
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers
Sense it in the world,
See it in your eyes,
Taste it in the air,
Know it in your soul,
Sense it in the world,
A shadow stirs.
See it in your eyes,
A shadow stirs.
Taste it in the air,
A shadow stirs.
Know it in your soul,
It’s time.
So will you quietly revolt?
It’s time.
This is my soul refrain,
It’s time.
Inviting all imaginations
It’s time.
To rise up from the embers again
Quiet revolution,
Feel it in your heart,
Falling from the heavens,
Burning underground,
Louder revolution,
A shadow stirs.
Feel it in the dark,
A shadow stirs.
Know it in the future,
A shadow stirs.
Know it in the past,
It’s time.
So will you quietly revolt?
It’s time.
This is my soul refrain,
It’s time.
Inciting all imaginations
It’s time.
To rise up from the embers again
Citizen poetic,
I find deliberately astray,
You seem a being without having,
As if having didn’t pay,
Wild mystical enigma,
Is the state of your inside,
It has you even as I sing ,
Devouring yourself alive.
With eyes of infinite affirmation,
To each their own black hole,
They glisten with free spirit,
And leak of radioactive soul,
Still something in their glow sings,
In melancholy keys,
The tune is of a mind gone diving,
Far too deep for me.
A discourse did ignite,
Two lanterns on a kite,
Cast out at darkness,
To carry forth light.
As for me a place to be,
Is none but than right where I am,
Passing through in awe,
What commerce cannot understand,
You could too see through this worldview,
If you saw what yours ignores,
Please don’t be quick to think I’m lost,
For simply wandering these shores.
Just bathe your eyes in these soft ocean skies,
Of blue, purple, and pink,
And you will find in this sublime,
That there are worse places to sink –
Crass rat race, not to my taste,
Out from the rush I stepped with haste,
It gave me twisted faces,
Only here I find my grace.
A discourse did ignite,
Two lanterns on a kite,
Cast out at darkness,
To carry forth light.
On the far side of the shore
Beneath a tree there sits a chair
Where I front every morning star
With questions God is meant to hear
Then later in the day
Like a mad Dostoyevskian clown
I chase my butterfly thoughts fragments
And try to write them down
A welcome cosmic accident
Of time and chance I trust
That we should meet this setting sun
Amongst all nature in the dusk
So come and join my meditations
Burning in the dew
Tonight I’d like to fight twilight
Inciting verse with you
A discourse did ignite,
Two lanterns on a kite,
Cast out at darkness,
To carry forth light.
There I was waiting
For something to transpire
As the world around me
Drifted by
It may arrive tomorrow
Then I can begin
Until then I suppose
I should just wait
Then I realized
That all else had been preparation
All those troubled times
When I thought my soul was on vacation
They were just paths that lead
To this exact location
Now I just need to keep on reinventing
This vocation
I found myself staring
Lost among the stars
As the world around me
Drifted by
Life is an accident
One after another
Oh no, I suppose
It must be fate
Then I realized
That all else had been preparation
All those troubled times
When I thought my soul was on vacation
They were just paths that lead
To this exact location
Now I just need to keep on reinventing
This vocation
There we were waiting
For the goods to just expire
As the world around us
Drifted by
It may all collapse tomorrow
Then we can begin
Until then I suppose
We should just wait
When will we realize
That all else has been preparation
These are troubled times
Calling timid souls back from vacation
They were just paths that lead
To this exact location
Now we just need to keep on reinventing
Civilization
Other generations had hunger
Other generations had war
But our generation’s
Facing so, so, so, much more
Other generations desired
Other generations had hope
Seems our generation
Is lost for which way to go
How about the upside, the upside,
Of down?
Other generations had surplus
Find and you will seek,
But our generation’s different
Upon Hubbert’s Peak
Call it a transition
Call it simplicity
All I’m asking from the depths of my nature
Let it be
How about the upside, the upside,
Of down?
It shouldn’t come as a surprise
Our civilizational demise
I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this muddle
I just know that there must be joy in the struggle
It might all sound crazy
Crazy it will be
When amongst the grassroots
We discover we are free
Don’t just be excited
Excited you should be
As we dig up cul de sacs
And plant a row of peas
How about the upside, the upside
Of down?
Are we the one’s we’ve been waiting for?
The contradiction that has never existed before
As I awoke from a dream I spoke aloud ‘maybe, just maybe’
And tomorrow quickly turned into today
Time has imploded; the future is now
This defies the laws of physics, but it happened somehow
We’re marching, we’re marching, we marching, we’re marching
We’re marching over the edge, left right left
For all, for all, a poetic kiss
For all, for all, a poetic kiss
Goodbye
We are the one’s we’ve have been waiting for
Expired have all excuses that existed before
But celebrate this calling, bear this burden with smile
This burden is a blessing in disguise
Time has exploded; the future is now
This defies the laws of physics, but it happened somehow
We’re marching, we’re marching, we marching, we’re marching
We’re marching over the edge, left right left
For all, for all, a poetic kiss
For all, for all, a poetic kiss
Goodbye
Furor Poeticus
Creativity just might save us
We can’t be saved now any other way
We can’t keep singing the same old songs
That brought us here
What we need are
Tunes for, we need tunes for transition
Naivety will not save us
We must create the taste by which we will be judged
We can’t keep singing the same old songs
That brought us here
What we need are
Tunes for, we need tunes for transition
TUNES FOR TRANSITION – To listen click here. (N.B. track 1 is at the bottom of the page)
Love it! Bringing the power of music to make this giant shift in consciousness happen is a must. And other groups are doing it as well.
Here in Utah, I’m involved with an inspiring group called Peaceful Uprising which has discovered a voice through music and revolutionary songs. It’s still a work in progress but check us out:
http://music.peacefuluprising.org
http://www.peacefuluprising.org
[…] Tunes for Transition (some Simplicity-related music for free download, with […]
Heard “A shadow stirs” on the Growthbusters CD – brilliant song.
Thanks Ken!
Love it! Bringing the power of music to make this huge shift in consciousness happens is imperative. And other groups are doing well.
Here in Utah, I’m involved with an inspiring group called peaceful uprising that has found a voice through music and revolutionary songs.