Vidya

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More about the album

Some one once called me a cynic. I explained that while I agree basic tenets of the Greek philosophers known as the cynics, that we should live a life of virtue in agreement with nature. I’m not going to do what Diogenes did and live in a bathtub on the streets of Athens.

As for the contemporary use of the word I really don’t feel I am cynical. I am not without hope for the human race, although we can be disappointing at times. I will admit to having a very dark sense of humour but I don’t generally mistrust others motives and I will not live a life of jaded negativity.

We can do better as a species and if occasionally I point that out or get angry at some of the dumb things humans do and or think that does not make me a cynic. I am one of many, a stakeholder in the future of the planet. I believe in people, and I believe in our power as a collective to change the world, and make it a better place. I also acknowledge that this is not inevitable. We may fail but I choose to hope we don’t.

My song writing is naturally informed by my nature and worldview and is why I continue to make music. Songs are important to our lives. They are memory markers, they are for healing, for sharing and they are ours. I believe in songs. I believe they are the key to a true spirituality, not some imaginary being that we must worship, but a demonstration of the connectedness of our nature. They are invisible but all around us and inside of us. They make us dance, laugh, love and communicate.

This album was recorded in my Studio Space at home usually late at night over the last 12 months or so. It’s cool what you can do on a 5-year-old Mac Book Pro laptop. I really enjoyed putting this album together and I hope you kind listener will enjoy listening to it. This is the most personal album I have made. Not having a band to negotiate with freed me up to achieve what I set out to do and made it sound and feel the way I envisioned. And I got to play mandolin and banjo.

I would like to thank the other musicians that appear on this album. First of all Rick Spencer who is not only a great keyboard player but also a talented songwriter and producer. We spent many hazy late nights listening and shaping this album. Pat O’Conner played bass and guitar on his Novax 8-String and is a whiz and a sterling chap.  Thanks also to David Bonser and Nigel Parry who provided some extra guitar texture where required.

Also special thanks go to my family. Thanks Heidi for the faith and love which made this album possible

Cheers

Corlson

About The Album

The songs on this album are all very recent in origin, mostly written and recorded at the same time. I like to work quickly on a song. If it comes together easy it is usually a good sign. The ones that I laboured on didn’t make the cut. Sometimes the music comes first, other times a lyric brought the music. Song writing can be unpredictable like that. Some nights I would sit down to write something and there was nothing there.

When choosing the songs for this album they needed to fit with the themes and overall feel of the album. There is anxiousness to the album, both on a personal and a more universal way. It is an album about change and about overcoming the fear of change. It is about loss, and about the impermanence of all things. Life and death, and the human connections we experience that makes all the trouble worthwhile.

 ‘A Question of Time’ starts the album and it was an easy decision to start with it. It is only a matter of time before all that we know has changed and mutated into something else. Recording this song got me excited about playing the electric guitar again.

‘You Don’t Want Me In The Morning’ is kind of autobiographical. I am a night person and I can be hard work in the mornings. The song was written and recorded in a night and despite the title is quite upbeat.

‘The Enemy That Doesn’t Exist’ is the mythical other that we are programmed to fear. It could be terrorists, or immigrants or gays getting married. It is fear of getting old, and losing our looks, it is the fear of the dark.  It is the baseless fear that marketing gurus and power hungry leaders tap into to sell their products and ideas. They create our ‘learned hopelessness’ that makes us feel powerless to change the world. It is the fear that keeps our soldiers fighting and dying.

‘The Slightest Moment’ and ‘Augmented Appeal’ are songs about modern life. We are bombarded with information and ‘choice’ constantly. Choose an identity, buy a religion, put on some leopard skin boots. We all find ourselves at Chapel Perilous and need to make a choice. Is what the voices of the marketeers and tastemakers, the priests and politicians telling us helping or hindering our true freedom and enlightenment?

‘The Living Art’ is love. Love of a father for his daughter or son. A love of family, and for life itself. I wrote this thinking of my eldest daughter after she left home. It was a sad time in some ways, but I was so proud of her and with what she was doing with her life, and excited for her as well. Learning when to let go is an important thing for a parent and is one of the harder moments we face.

‘Fly Away’ is kind of about my daughter leaving home as well, but also about the death of my aunty. Her passing hit me in a delayed way. I had not really kept in touch with her for several years and it was sad to lose some one I remember as a funny, caring person. Seeing my dad mourn her loss was a hard thing and got me thinking of the love between brother and sister, as well as a father and his child. It is a song of parting and of letting go, but also one of love.

‘Without You’ is one of those songs that come to unbidden out of the night fully formed. Channelled from great wellspring of inspiration: the collective unconscious. Its themes are quite universal and like all of my songs, they are open to personal interpretation.

The closing tune, ‘The World is Beautiful’ is the most recent recording. It is an adaptation of a jam from the 64 track ‘DB Threshold Jam Songs’ recorded a few years ago by David Bonser, Shaun Hoffmann and Myself.  Dave plays guitars on this track, which were the last tracks recorded for the album. The lyrical theme again addresses the powerless and danger we feel at times in the world, but it suggests that the simple pleasures and beauty of life make it worthwhile. And that maybe the best thing we can do is to use our time to ‘make it a little bit better.’

Lyrics for New Album

A Question of Time

Thanks for the lies and thanks for the memory space.

The city will burn with anger and amazing grace.

The profit the preacher are looking for another faith

And you know it’s just a matter of time

And you know it’s just a question of time

 

You love all your losses and curse all that’s good in you

Nurture or nature or nothing, what are you gonna do?

Is it all for the one or one for the all in you?

And you know it’s just a matter of time

And you know it’s just a question of time

 

Thanks for your time and thank you for messing up

I don’t feel so bad I just couldn’t do enough

Everything changes and some call it growing up

And you know it’s just a matter of time

And you know it’s just a question of time

 

You Don’t Want me in the Morning

I’d talk about the lighter side but I’d get bored and wonder why

The buildings stand and comets fly in the scheme of things a blinking eye.

Don’t waste your chance in the dying sun it will take years and we’ll be gone

Past a million past a tonne I don’t know why we’re waiting

You don’t want me in the morning; I’ll be all used up.

You don’t want me in the morning light, with my well-known appetite for a darker slice.

I’ll walk as shadow in your wake. I’ll try and not stand in your way.

I’ll get it wrong and laugh and say ‘is it all gonna be OK?’

We’ll kiss as strangers and part as friends, dice with death and means and ends.

You’ll shut me up when I cannot stop. You’ll place me down and set me off.

You don’t want me in the morning; I’ll be all used up.

You don’t want me in the morning light, with my well-known appetite for a darker slice.

I won’t pretend that it’s enough but I wont complain when it gets too tough

Might follow the letter but forget my lines, absolve myself in my petty crimes.

I’ll crumble it up and paper it down. Light it up and turn it round.

We’ll watch the ocean burn, as the golden sun touches down.

You don’t want me in the morning. I’ll be all used up

You don’t want me in the morning light, with my well-known appetite for a darker slice of life.

Don’t talk to me about clarity as ambition gives way to gravity

You wont want me in the morning.

 

The Enemy That Doesn’t Exist

It’s a ghostly refrain running on rails from my heart

Bound down town and the dark night you’ve found

The city and all the rain

Waiting for me at a quarter past 3 in the morning, under starlight

In the dark of the night, strangers sleep tight.

Soldiers make light before the battle

And hope to fight again

Hope to fight again

And we, well we are fools and thieves.

And it’s ourselves that we deceive.

With our vain broken hearts and our greed for more please

Always looking for more than we need

Sticks and stones and cluster bombs I’m running from

And ideas that don’t change

Waiting for me at a quarter past 3 in the morning under starlight

In the dark of the night, stranger sleep tight.

Soldiers make light before the battle

And hope to fight again

And hope to fight again

I’m just tired of fighting an enemy that doesn’t exist

Why have they got us fighting an enemy that doesn’t exist?

 

The Slightest Moment

You can give the third degree; hold a pyramid above your heart.

Hand me the money and the marketeers. Tell me that it’s not far.

There’s a hole in the soul of man, and you sell it like a work of art.

Take your medicine and fly home; or ride in the back of my car.

Hiding in shadow a ringing cymbal. Inside a jail, inside a jail.

The slightest signal, your grand gesture. Just hold it while I check my mail.

Don’t read the paper or check the numbers, find a match and burn it down.

Look for judgement in the reason. Look for something that isn’t found

Don’t you want to steal don’t you want to feel it all

Don’t you want to take some time don’t you want to feel at all

Where’s my telephone? I’m like a dog without a bone.

It tells me when I’m home and everywhere I roam.

Don’t you want to steal? Don’t you want to feel it all?

Don’t you want to take some time? Don’t you want to feel at all?

Don’t you want to steal it all?

Don’t you want to feel at all?

 

The Living Art

A child might ask when scared of the dark to leave the light on.

Just the sort of thing I would never hear from you.

Your spirit, your spark, you’re the living art you make it easy.

Now I remember all the little things that you do.

You make me laugh you break my heart you put it all back together.

You’ve got no class; you’re a pain in the arse

But you know how to make it all better

Everything is for you

Every little thing that I do

A child might ask when scared of the dark ‘leave the light on.’

Just the sort of thing I would never get from you.

Your spirit, your spark, you’re the living art you make it easy.

Now I remember all the little things that you do.

You make me laugh, you break my heart, you put it all back together.

You’ve got no class, you’re a pain in the arse

But you know how to make it all better

Don’t you know its all for you

It’s a big wide world and there so much left to do.

Augmented Appeal

As cold a gas like slipstream turning down your hi-beam

Now every one is scattering like particles

In a cloud a dust up, must have been a bust up.

Automatic wage slave assimilate

Altered your real Augmented appeal

So touch it and feel adequate or radical

We ride on the dreamboat force it down our own throat

Tired of scattering and gathering

Every day. Every possible way, I’m trying to stay right now.

Its easy to feel morbid there nothing left to forfeit

Spinning out of orbit with empty hand

I understand these monsters went looking for some sponsors.

The evidence was plain as day on the spreadsheet.

Talking to a stranger ill get a little wager

Take it off the grid just a little bit

You were such an angel with a speck of danger in both of your wrists

Every day. Every possible way, I’m trying to stay right now.

Every day. Every possible way, I’m trying to stay right now.

We spoke about your regrets I would just say just forget and walk away

Please take what you need and learn from the stupidity of the past

I could not say, that it may not or may, be will be fine, all right, ok.

Every day. Every possible way, I’m trying to stay right now.

 

Fly Away

How can I forget that baby in my arms?

That’s the look of faith ‘Daddy keep me safe from harm.’

Wishing that I could keep you forever in my arms

Wishing that you would not fly away

I don’t know where its gone but it doesn’t feel like years.

Sister of my heart your brothers gonna keep you safe from harm.

Wishing that I could keep you forever in my arms

Wishing that you would not fly away

How can I forget that baby in my arms?

That’s the look of love ‘ your brothers gonna keep you safe from harm

Wishing that I could keep you forever in my arms

Wishing that you would not fly away.

 

Without You

 

Film of the world it’s twisting light into my eyes.

Solid. Not withstanding these tumultuous tides.

Wouldn’t you like to be magic?

I. Lost in time, thought that I could float on through.

But hours turned to years, tunred to fears of losing you.

Im not leaving here without you.

Not leaving here without you

Not leaving here without you

Without You

The distant roar of the people sure landing on the night beach sand

Eyes are doors, the windows speak but they don’t bleed anymore

Im not leaving here without you.

The floods of tears mopped up by cold bottles of beer.

Smoked like a roach torn and toked. Burned up.

Im not leaving here without you.

Not leaving here without you

Not leaving here without you

Without You

 

 

The World is Beautiful

I hear you’re coming back again.

Coming back again, to settle some old scores.

You think you know just what it needs I know just what you think it needs.

You see every single lie; every single lie was for me

I think I know just what you meant, when you tried the government line

And they will kill you the street, and not even bat an eye

And the world is big and cold. The world is beautiful. Beautiful

In the day, or in the night. I mean have you seen the sky it’s just so big and bright

Make it a little bit better with your time.

Any day, or any night. I mean have you seen the sight of the sky on fire at night

And the world is big and cold. The world is beautiful. Beautiful

Make it a little bit better with your time…..

 

Live at Railway Hotel

Contemplating the last ever No Flowers No Wedding Dress Show

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