JOHN GREAVES
Songs


  • Bad Alchemy (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1974
  • Gegenstand (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1976
  • Kew.Rhône. (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1976
  • Sad Emission (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1977
  • Solitary (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1977
  • For Bearings (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1978
  • Milk (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1978
  • Silence (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1978
  • How Beautiful You Are (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1981
  • Irma (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1982
  • Swelling Valley (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1983
  • The Bee Dream (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1984
  • The Price We Pay (J.Greaves) © 1984
  • The Song (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1986
  • The Only Song (P.Blegvad/J.Greaves) © 1988
  • Back Where We Began (J.Greaves/S.Domancich) © 1991

  • BAD ALCHEMY
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    I dream Hermaphrodite and I sit up all night
    Our eyes on the horizon of a wobbling bowl
    Heads in hands we ponder dregs the bowl contains
    A liquid's left putrescence after being drained

    What we feel we have to solve
    Is why the dregs have not dissolved


    When I wake I wonder what it means
    Am I bad alchemy? It seems
    I image self unmixed, a risk,
    In a dish for drinking
    Fluid with a strongly stinking sediment
    Is that what it meant?

    I dream Hermaphrodite and I sit up all night
    Our eyes on the horizon of a wobbling bowl
    Am I hermaphrodite?
    Neither one nor quite the other?

    What we feel we have to solve
    Is why the dregs have not dissolved


    GEGENSTAND
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    It but incurs
    A lustre in a flood
    After many not dislodged

    And at each subsidence
    Half arises
    Half holds to cloudy water
    Nature of its anchor kept occult

    We keep a current
    Flowing from a sluice
    Cloud it with corrsives
    Hoping to appropriate
    What holds its own so well
    What tips an ever wider wake


    KEW.RHONE.
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    (Who?)
    We who knew no woe
    We who were her hero
    (When?)
    When we were on her knee
    When we knew her
    When were were one
    (Where?)
    Kew.Rhône.
    We won renown
    (How?)
    We were her worker
    We won honor enow
    When we knew her
    When we were one
    Where?
    Kew.Rhône.

    Not a set animal
    Not a set animal, laminates
    Laminates a tone of
    A set animal
    Animal, laminates
    A set animal
    Animal, laminates
    Laminates a tone of sleep
    A tone of sleep

    Peel's foe
    Not a set animal
    Laminates a tone of sleep


    MOSTLY TWINS AND TRIOS
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    This is due to be
    just a memory residue (repeated)

    Envy, green as ivy, lubricates an axel
    to the point of frenzy

    Yes, a bucket as it emplies
    has significance inside a space like this one

    Much of the space is peopled by mostly twins and trios
    freed of anything like frenzy

    The implements which killed them,
    once excited to a frenzy, mostly twins and trios


    SAD EMISSION
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    Testing 1-2-3... Do you read me?
    Do you receive me? Am I coming through?

    I'm the signal on your radio
    But I'm getting weaker
    so turn up your speaker
    for a minute or two

    It's true that other radios than yours receive me
    But this emission's specially for you

    If I could I'd give you all my money
    So you could hear my signals in stereo

    But to make it easy in the meantime
    Move a little nearer, so you can hear what I sing

    And I sing of this signal on your radio
    And with your permission
    I send this emission
    directly to you


    ACTUAL FRENZY
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    First that a wheel like a mill-wheel turns between two trees.
    Then that the trees store a substance in their foliage which they broadcast in installments to the wheel.
    Then that this substance nourishes and lubricates the wheel and makes it turn.
    Then that two men are walking inside the wheel.
    First that their walking turns it. Then that its turning forces them to be always walking.
    Then that the foliage blows green.
    Then that the nourishment broadcast is envy, that if the wheel had what it wanted it wouldn't turn and the men would not be walking.
    Then that even turning slowly, wheel is emblem of a kind of frenzy.
    Then that a space extends to either side of trees and wheel and recedes to a horizon behind them.
    Then that much of this space is peopled.
    Then that the space advances to constitute a foreground and that this foreground encompasses a pit.
    Then that certain people in the space are holding objects.
    Then that in a space like this one an object is the attribute of whoever bears it, much as saints in icons bear as attributes the implements which killed them.
    Then that in a space like this one even a wheel like a mill-wheel has its attribute: the continuous chain of buckets which it drives.
    Then that when the wheel turns, buckets rise from the pit full of rocks and mud, empty themselves down a chute at the top of the cahin, and return down the other side, bottoms up, for more.
    Then that a bucket descending empty is emblem of *residual* frenzy.
    Then that a bucket coming up full is emblem of *potential* frenzy.
    Then that a bucket as it empties is emblem of *actual* frenzy.


    SOLITARY
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    The human ass comes under fire
    Asses resemble closely other asses
    In curves & masses
    Firing the same at the right time
    Best if one is like oneself, solitary
    Best when men mix to be the one unmixed,
    neat, undiluted, solitary

    What gladness to flee the world
    Into a new world made largely with the intellect
    Amid the ravishing lucidity there,
    things that can be & cannot be
    get well churned together
    There big & little must be the same
    in that the difference doesn't make any
    "Little" is transformed,
    from being small "a paltry thing
    becomes the janitor of the wide world"

    Like you
    Is this "you" not yourself?
    Not you? Why not? Not long enough?
    You & your long enough
    Who do you think I am?
    I am you
    Yes, you - that whole great
    majestically startling
    mentally epic burning
    model of heaven


    FOR BEARINGS
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    He sets nothing by a star
    Course least of all and great store
    By a flurry more of wings than weather
    The influence he's under
    Which is, it happens, hers


    MILK
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    In the dark
    From crude compoundings
    Comes a white pus
    Phosphorescent from all its encounters with darkness

    And out of darkness it will appear
    Gushing from the ground
    From the nipples
    Diverse parts of the breast
    Even from the armpits

    It is white in all cases
    Drink and seed in one

    The piece of liquid referred to as 'this' in :

    "nourishing, soothing, still warm,
    ah, surely it befits us to drink this..."

    to mutter with closed lips
    with closed lips
    to suck in


    IRMA
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    It is night
    Irma's lying next to me
    It is dark
    I hear sounds disturbing me
    Several people are entering the room
    I can't move
    I can't reach my weapon
    The people (all men) climb the stairs
    From basement up to bedroom
    They're talking to me
    But the words are muffled
    Absolutely unintelligible
    I try to curse at them
    Ask them what they're doing
    When they're disturbing me
    But I'm unable to speak to them
    And they pay no attention to me
    They disrobe
    Attack Irma sexually
    I'm unable to see her face
    Or their faces


    SILENCE
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    "The rest is silence"
    With this her letters all begin
    She remembers numbers
    The message that his code was in
    She re-numbers members
    To look like parts of other men
    In its humid hollow
    His tongue will find its roots again

    "The rest is silence"
    Towards it every number tends
    As it tends to matter
    The matter in a manner ends

    'Neath a tree with leaves as big as she
    Breaking his code, she broke his code


    HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    From the window of our honeymoon,
    the night looks a mite bizarre
    They're burning us in effigy
    and smoke's blotting out the stars
    They're torturing our servants
    by the light of an armoured car
    Please don't ask if it's the end of the line -
    you know I never could see that far
    Tonight I'd rather look at you,
    How beautiful you are

    If they ask you "what are lovers?",
    tell them "lovers are"
    Set against the order,
    we live outside the law
    I'm no hero under torture,
    I'll tell them all I heard and all I saw
    I saw everything in you, my love,
    it seems it's all I ever saw...
    Tonight I see it all anew,
    How beautiful you are

    Pass me the binoculars -
    no, no, leave them where they are
    Don't want my vision magnified,
    I don't need to see that far
    From the window of our honeymoon,
    draw the curtains cross the bars
    Let's spare ourselves that spectacle,
    the problem's theirs not ours
    Tonight I'd rather look at you,
    How beautiful you are


    THE BEE DREAM
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    Each of us has in our soul
    A portion of eagle, a portion of mole
    One soars in the sunlight
    One soars in a hole
    The mountain which looks like a prop
    Is black at the bottom and white at the top
    Soldiers surround it with twine
    I have to cut through it to claim what is mine
    Its summit is marked by a tree
    My double in uniform challenges me
    He says "is this tree mine?"
    I say "tap it and see"
    He drives in a platinum spout
    Turns the tap on, all this jelly comes out
    Royal Jelly I stored in this tree
    In an earlier lifetime, when I was a bee
    Yeah, I'm a King Bee, though my wings be furled
    And my kingdom is not of this world


    SWELLING VALLEY
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    Every valley swells up and turns
    Black with desire
    To be the last frontier
    Desire is

    Abalone and Silver Bow
    Cowboy towns
    Swell like bell-metal
    For the sheer hell of it

    This is not all pleasure
    Either:
    Make my crooked straight
    My rough places plain

    No frontier
    No matter how rough
    Includes itself as data

    Which brings us to the desert
    We swelter in
    No plain was ever rougher
    Nothing plainer


    ALWAYS BE NEW TO ME
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    We are what we pretend to be
    "More true than real", if you follow me
    It all happens so suddenly
    "More true than real", if you follow me

    "That which is firm doth flit and fly away,
    that which is fleeting doth abide and stay"

    At least that's what the poets say
    It all happens in a single day
    The girl I love put her lips against my ear
    and whisper:
    "We are the only people here,
    do what you want to do to me,
    but...
    Always be new to me
    Always be new to me"

    We bud, we blossom and we blast
    It goes by so fast
    I hope I'm buried when I'm dead
    My head resting by her head
    on a single pillow in a double bed
    Never to be bothered
    "Always be new to me
    Always be new to me"

    From any B to any A
    From apple through to zebra say
    We always take the quickest way
    And arrive before we started
    Always be new to me
    Always be new to me


    THE PRICE WE PAY
    Words & Music
    by John Greaves

    If I live too long
    I will sing too many songs
    If I die today
    You will love me anyway

    I could be brave, suddenly
    Coming of age, suddenly
    There are some words better said
    silently

    Wake into sleep, suddenly
    Shallow to deep, suddenly
    You may love me
    We will die anywayw


    THE SONG
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    Town in the shadow of a mountain
    Crown of the mountain came avalanching down
    All summer long
    We are stalking what
    We came to call the Song

    The Song was a kind of eruption
    Mover of mountains, avalanche of crowns
    When we were young
    We sought the laws
    We thought would cause the Song

    Life is a dream
    We are phantoms
    Man is the union
    Of divinity and dust

    All summer long
    When we were young
    Before we'd sung the Song

    No mere machine made of music
    Of words and music as other songs are
    This was the Song
    A recipe, a remedy, a cure

    The Song would be sung on the border
    Sung by us standing, straddling the line
    Between two worlds
    Unified only by the Song


    BACK WHERE WE BEGAN
    Words by John Greaves, Music by Sophia Domancich

    Lie there love and fear not while love is here
    Whisper in my soul "what was part is whole"
    Sense cannot admit absence, nothingness

    Say this breath goes now
    We know not why nor how
    It mets and makes no sound
    Turns the air to ground

    Though I say what I should not
    Let you hear
    Evidently, there is no season
    Mortality, if there's a reason
    We know not what it is

    In worlds enough and time
    This sadness is no crime
    Bend to what is near
    Safe from harm and fear
    Oh this is a lucky day, anyway

    We take our parting of
    Sublunary love
    Two souls which are one
    Parted for too long

    Love is born anew in me, in you and me
    We come to the end and start all over
    The A and the Z of one another
    Back where we began


    THE ONLY SONG
    Words by Peter Blegvad, Music by John Greaves

    Imagine a world where this was the only song
    & against your will
    You had to sit & listen to it all day long
    until it made you ill
    Until it made you ill

    Imagine a world where this was the only song
    & against your will
    You had to sit & listen to it all day long
    until it made you ill
    Until it made you ill

    Imagine a world where this was the only song
    & against your will
    You had to sit & listen to it all day long
    until it made you ill
    Until it made you ill

    Imagine a world where this was the only song
    & against your will
    You had to sit & listen to it all day long
    until it made you ill
    Until it made you ill

    Imagine a world where this was the only song
    & against your will
    You had to sit & listen to it all day long
    until it made you ill
    Until it made you ill

    etc.