Whole Cowardly Bundle of Art
I set about writing this album in the days that followed the death of George Floyd. Not out of a sense of rage or protest but out of the need for me to define the beauty in a world gone and got so ugly. But still, the world kept turning, ‘COVID 19’ kept coming and our divisions grew wider and our belief in our kind once again seemed to be deserting us.
But there are unimaginable amounts of goodness in this world, we are made of it. The mycelium effect of people is capable and strong, when we invest in that. We feel it when we see them cry, when they sleep and when they are born. Insert picture of a war ravaged Syria where an unknown graffiti artist had painted the face of George Floyd on a broken bit of bomb damaged wall, sticking out of the busted ground from where everything as far as the eye can see, has been bombed and flattened to death. Even then. Even after all of that war. All of that death. Even there! Even there, they felt it.
Life is a work of art.
Written, performed and produced by me. Piano and percussion by Otto
Click Apple Music or Spotify to listen.
Released 2021
Track Listing
- No Barriers
- Love is Made of Nothing
- Anybody
- Art
- I Can Breathe
- Whole Cowardly Bundle of Art
- Crime in Bethlehem
- Every Kinda Greed
- Another Coffee
- Walking into Composition
- A Canvas
No Barriers
And the villains come
We stand as one
And they drop the bomb
But wait it’s what we are
And bombs go boom
Kiss the womb
Looney tunes
Look at me
Look at me
Sleep well a little happy ever after
We stand up to fight
Read by candle light
Walks the streets at night
It’s what we are
Come on put it right
Put that right
But we feel out loud
Love like god
Artist bowed
Infants stand - it's what we are
This is what we are
And the astronauts see no barriers from space
And the doctors see no barriers between people
And the children
They see no barriers at all
Sleep well little happy ever after
Life don’t bring to it chastity
And in all this time
The whales they swam in peace
We are not the chosen
No barriers
Love is Made of Nothing
Give me animal voices
Give me orgasm stigmata
Give me a hole in the world
Get me a battlefield girl
You smell like you feel
Laying naked and foetal
Money will break her soul
History is dead
It's the pleasure effect
Human love is so old
Her taste on me still
It's the gruff of a beautiful girl
We slept entwined
Brain washes the spine
And girls make love into their hands in this big bit a cake of a world
The prayer that you moan
The human mouth is divine
The prayer that you moan
The human mouth is divine
Make everywhere home
She's reading black psalms
Rooster sleeps late
We ate all the cake
Love louder than bombs
Like the weight of a kiss
Love is made of nothing
Get down from the cross
Sonnet of profit and loss
A political tree don’t exist
What is madness anyway
She fell asleep and mooed
No more dreams which you die
No more wake up and cry
Then there was light
It's the prayer that you moan
The human mouth is divine
It’s the prayer that you moan
The human mouth is divine
Her taste on me still
It’s the gruff of a beautiful girl
We slept intwined
Brain washes the spine
And girls make love into their hands in this big bit a cake of a world
Anybody
And I live in Budapest and Rome
I’m a lightning strike on your way home
I’m cloven hoofed and I’m stiletto
I come alive with Camus and Descartes
Life is boring which is why we got art
Step out your dress and out your halo
Black dancers dance
And all men know what white men fear
And from a horse
You can stand beside a deer
And the fault lines of bottles used
And the fragrant bed that smells like you
And your photographs of Paradiso
Seven billion suspects felt the knot
Mankind knows the sorrows of God
And if I’d a listened I’d a known you were that alone
Art
Movie stars la la la
Sold the world gone too far
Happiness - Refrigerate
Smile out loud
Banksy
Bogota
Architecture - Raise the dam
Lick the mouth
Kiss the hand
Turn over words for truth
Back off - Kick it
Lives of low carat gold
Woke the beast
Play the tart
Find your voice
Paint the dark
Born of lust
Lost a year
Alma Clooney
America
Tender - Beauty sold
Filled my eyes - Let it go
Forty conflicts - Live today
Take me to your leader
Love in a time of war
Boulder problem
Life of grime
Abattoir - Guggenheim
Abuse yourself
Touch the perineum
On the way to little white lines
Need attention
Dance all night
Lips numb - Got a light
lift your skirt - Palette knife
Show the world how beautiful we are
Heal the living
Begging bowl
Hang yourself
Self-control
Cultured meat
Gossamer
Love parade
Angry with salvation
La Tomatina
Arab spring
Hypothalamus
Emotional being
Foolish ways we make love
Portrait of a lady on fire
Heels in the air
Sumptuous text
Big Bang theory
Googleplex
Pimped - Porn’d - Song
Death - God
Baby makers logging on
Take em off
Giving birth
Join me - Kiss me
Planet Earth
When’s it gonna be an adventure
Life is a work of art
I Can Breathe
Dancer smelt the scent beneath her wings
Thew her moisture upon all my things
Allow her body to be free
Jailor slipped food beneath my door so I could feed
Read me stories so I’ll feel freed
Opened my bars so I can breathe
Lover hold me close when I’m alone
Whisper love harmonies when you moan
Become animal like me
Life I see you weeping when you leave
Virus you brought down war to peace
Children take well the wisdom you receive
Black girl tell me what is it you feel
The injustice that won’t heal
Still throwing ropes over the trees
World unchain yourself upon the streets
United colours on bended knees
I sing because we can breathe
Whole Cowardly Bundle of Art
I’ll tell you my story if you promise not to care
Sunk all my lifeboats of everybody I knew
Heart pumping knees knocking whole cowardly bundle of art
I don’t know where I’m goin’ but it sure feels like something new
Don’t give flowers in the dark they don’t work at night
Wagging’ fingers at what money’ll make you do
Parked a cigarette walked home in the rain
Hey little book I fell in love with you
Setting fire to conversation just to watch ‘em burn
Between your two principle dates is all the time you got left
Let me tell ya
What you do with it is life
What you did with it is death
I’m hanging out in Paris dating nudes
Singing like Satie
In closing her tears filled the hall
And it's not true that everyone knows someone
Sometimes you really don’t know anyone at all
The human body is pitch black on the inside
All knowledge is worthless without light
Come on come on come on
Come on people drink it in
We are made for each other
And I cried out loud in song
My heart is panting
I found the girl with the best smelling lips
It's love
It's hope
It's free
I like the dreams of God
Oxygenate my blood
Stand down
Use it up
This world is not angry
Crime in Bethlehem
When I go I’ll leave heroin and clues
I hurt I hurt oh take me home
I hide beneath moon rainbows and the residue of prayer
And I’m all out of this fragile soul
But I can’t be here I got to go
Been reading Agustín Fernández Mallo
How do we turn sound-waves into music and love
I gotta get back the choir's all alone
And I know that love will find a way
And I know it’ll hurt 'til then
I don’t care what you wanna believe in
But that wall is the spiritual crime in Bethlehem
The fishermen knows - it’s a painful world
It comes in love and woe
From the balcony temples harmonise three times a day
And what we call the soul lays me low
They're showing Tommaso on the judges wall
She pours Cassis and it flows
My thoughts are a great a source of comfort and tyranny
And I always catch the peaches you throw
And I know that love will find a way
And I know it’ll hurt ’til then
I don’t care what you wanna believe in
But that wall is the spiritual crime in Bethlehem
Every Kinda Greed
Now I’m going the wrong way
Gotta find the man
Got a lot a poison
Lets hope they understand
Surface tension hold me
Just coming into land
Jailor forgot right from wrong
It’s the times in which we live
And they don’t follow me no more
But I ain't begun to give
And I feel the death of that
Organic vodka with
They leave the candles unburned here
Don’t wanna raise no hell
They run outta grain in my hometown
Heroin as well
And even the young are growin’ old
Still so much to tell
And you know the lies are coming
And you know the truth is cheap
And it ain’t heaven you're after no
Just anything to make you sleep
Hungry for an easy life
Feed us when we’re low
Dreams don’t keep their promises
Can’t reap before you sow
Took my glass looked past the sun
There’s so much we don’t know
Yesterday gotta be some place
Nothing's what it seems
She turned me down on the bottom line
But begging’s not for me
Now we’re busy playing lies
And pornographic dreams
Stood my pistols looking at me
Come watch me bleed
There are seven types of holy man
She said none of which you need
No one listens anymore
Overload with every kinda greed
Another Coffee
There are no words to explain being alive
Who but a unicorn keeps their promises
So many people got nowhere to fall
Life can be as deadly as unforgiveness
You can’t frighten vultures - they’ve seen it all
Inspiration isn’t sitting in a bar that’s death by life
Blindman told me seeing is for beginners
I’d hand back my revolution just to leave with her
And I’ve seen em down and I’ve seen em rise up
Music is the symptom and at the same time the cure
What if nothing is real, there’s no proof and there never will be
Master the achievement not the applause
Just a coffee shop diva singing a marmalade tune
Belonging to countries is where all the trouble starts
How was Auschwitz only 24 years from standing on the moon
They save your life like it’s a minuscule event
And on it we all ride tall the tide of human grace
Supermarkets are for hacks
Piano tuner coming concert pitch imminent
I put away those I love and go park my day in a ditch
I thought about Berlin while reading a book isn’t that incredible
I was not here for 4.6 billion years and then I arrived
We are what we have done
The sun is white and it spins and the sky is black
Life we live it most when it is fleeting
We hold on to it most when it has gone
And we crave most that which has yet to come
Walking into Composition
And I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life
And I sing for you through augmented skies
Blasphemy don’t hurt
And these roads don’t go home
And I chased her across Europe
We laid down in Rome
But I’ve seen 'em stand after defeat
Still the currency of love
Bounces between the people we meet
And to the guys in bars with guitars
Why ain't you stampin’ your feet
There’s a delicate ache from the silhouette in my bed
Like the explanation of slavery felt but unsaid
We walk into composition as you walk into love and light
Sentimental man
Who cares what you write
And I’m goin’ home these songs make me weep
Give away that
Which a child knows to keep
And to the guys in bars with guitars
Why ain't you stampin’ your feet
A Canvas
Come to me my little martyr
Help me sweep the day away
I’m hungrier than hotels round here
Take off your clothes not your gilet
Stretch a canvas for us to come back to
In big mad boots size of a Chevrolet
Your smile beneath the Brixton hat
In our mansion made for two
You roar with love and umami
From a palette made of you
We walk cobbled streets in reverie
And we share the people that we grew
Love like doctors in superhero masks
When your beautiful canvas is full
Wealth is what you give away
And the world will feel it too
Come with me it’ll be alright
Love from an untethered point of view