Van der Graaf Generator (69,12 %)
Still Life (56,85 %)
Released: 1976-04-15
Type: Studio
Type: Studio
Ranking:
Artist:
6
Year (1976):
44
Decade (1970's):
421
Overall:
1927
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1.
Pilgrims
 07:13
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2.
Still Life
 07:24
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3.
La Rossa
 09:52
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4.
My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)
08:02
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5.
Childlike Faith in Childhood's End
12:25
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Album length:
44:56
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Lyrics |
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1.
Pilgrims
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Sometimes you feel so far away, Distanced from all the action of the play, Unable to grasp significance, Marking the plot with diffident dismay, Stranded at centre stage, Scrabbling through your diary for a lost page: Unsure of the dream. Kicking a stone across the beach, Aching for love and comfort out of reach, The way ahead seems to be so bleak, There's no-one with any friendship left to speak Or show any relation Between your present and future situations: Lost to the dream. Away, away, away: look to the future day For hope, some form of peace within the Growing storm. I climb through the evening, Alive and believing: In time we shall all know our goals And so, finally, home. For now, all is secret Though how could I speak it, Allow me the dream in my eye. I've been waiting for such a long time Just to see it at last, All of the hands tightly clasped, All of us pilgrims. Walking in silence down the coast, Merely to journey, here hope is the most; Merely to know there is an end, All of us, lovers, brothers, sisters, friends Hand in hand. Shining footprints on the wet sand Lead to the dream. The time has come, the tide has almost run And drained the deep: I rise from lifelong sleep. It seems such a long time I've dreamed but now, awake, I Can see we are pilgrims and so Must walk this road, Unknown in our purpose, Alone, but not worthless, And home ever calling us on. We've been waiting here for so long, All of our hands joined in hope, Holding the weight on the rope, All of us pilgrims. |
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2.
Still Life
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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 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 It'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 thoughts now of holding fast the line, Defying death and time? Everything we had is gone, Everything we laboured for and favoured more Than earthly things reveals the hollow ring Of false hope and 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. |
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3.
La Rossa
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Lacking sleep and food and vision Here I am again, encamped upon your floor, Craving sanctuary and nourishment, Encouragement and sanctity and more. The streets seemed very crowded, I put on my bravest guise I know you know that I am acting, I can see it in your eyes. In the harsh light of freedom I know That I cannot deny that I have wasted time, Have frittered it away in idle boasts Of my freedom and fidelity, When simpler words would have profited me most It isn't enough in the end, when I'm looking for hope. Though the organ-monkey screams As the pipes begin to spit Still he'll go through the dance routines Just as long as he thinks they'll fit, Just as long as he knows that it's dance, smile or quit. Like the monkey I dance to a strange tune When all of these years I've longed to lie with you, I've bogged myself down in the web of talk, Quack philosophy and sophistry At physicality I've always balked, Like the man in the chair who believes it's Beyond him to walk. I've been hiding behind words, Fearing a deeper flame exists, Faintly aware of the passage Of opportunities I have missed. But the nearness and the smell of you, La Rossa from head to toe I don't know what I'm telling you, But I think you ought to know Soon the dam wall will break, soon the water will flow. Though the organ-monkey groans As the organ-grinder plays He's hoping, at the most, For an end to his dancing days; Still he hops up and down on his perch In the usual jerky way. Though it might mean an end to all friendship There's something I'm working up to say. Think of me what you will; I know that you think you feel my pain No matter if that's just the surface. If we made love now would that change all That ahs gone before? Of course it would, there's no way it could ever be the same One more line crossed, One more mystery explained. Now I need more than just words, though The options are plain that lead from all Momentary action. If we make love now it will change all That is yet to be Never could we agree in the same way again. One more world lost, One more heaven gained. La Rossa, you know me, you read me as though I am glass; Though I know it there's no no way in which I can pass Though it means that you'll finish my story At last I'd trade all the clever talk, The joking, the smoking and the quips, All the midnight conversations, all the friendship, All the words and all the trips For the warmth of your body, The more vivid touch of your lips. All bridges burning behind me, All safety beyond reach, The monkey feels his chains out blindly, Only to find himself released. Take me, take me now and hold me deep Inside your ocean body, Wash me as some flotsam to the shore, There leave me lying evermore! Drown me, drown me now and hold me down Before your naked hunger, Burn me at the altar of the night- Give me life! |
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4.
My Room (Waiting for Wonderland)
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Searching for diamonds in a sulphur mine, leaning on props that 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 ahve been spoken... still you don't understand how it feels when I'm waiting for them to be broken. |
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5.
Childlike Faith in Childhood's End
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Existence is a stage on which we pass a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart: it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go and try to make a start at seeing something more than day to day survival, chased by final death if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come, I wouldn't waste my breath Somehow, there must be more. There was a time when more was felt than known but now, entrenched inside my sett, in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain: we live, we die...and yet? In the beginning there was order and destiny but now that path has reached the border, and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be. Though the forces which hold us in place last through eons in unruffled grace we, too, wear the face of creation. As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history. It seems as though time must betray us, yet we're alive and though I see no God to save us, yetl we survive through the centuries of progress which don't get us very far. All illusion! All is bogus - we don't yet know what we are... Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man! with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows! We might not be there to share it if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it if the next life is the best. Even if there is a heaven when we die, endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie that always comes as answer to the question, "Why do we see through the eyes of creation?" Adrift without a course, it's very lonely here, our only conjecture what lies behind the dark. Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline, think of a lifetime which means more than my own one - dreams of a grander thing than we are. Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders: when all life is over who can say no mutated force shall remain? Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay still we know we shall scale the heights some day. Frightened in the silence - frightened, but thinking very hard, let us make computations of the stars. Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run: faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes: colour blisters, image splinters gravitate towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate, The universe now beckons and Man, too, must take His place... just a few last fleeting seconds to wander in the waste, and the children who were ourselves move on, reincarnation stills its now perfected song, and at last we are free of the bonds of creation. All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too, all the throng who have danced a merry tune - human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above, in the name of all faith and hope and love. There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too, there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude, naked to the galaxies - naked, but clothed in the overview... as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew. And though dark is the highway, and the peak's distance breaks my heart, for I never shall see it, still I play my part, believing that what waits for us is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past... In the death of mere humans life shall start |