The Intermission continues.
This was originally just a mood piece, but now finds its place in the main narrative between 0.3 “The Second Hand Unwinds” and 5.4 “In The Land Of Angels”.
01 Donovan – The Little Church (1972, England/Italy) JACK and SUSAN with SKYWATCH
If you want your dream to be
Take your time go slowly
Do few things but do them well
Heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life free
Take your time go slowly
Do few things but do them well
Heartfelt joys are holy
Day by day, stone by stone
Build your secret slowly
Day by day, you'll grow too
You'll know heaven's glory
Jack is beginning from square one.
And here’s Donovan again. This was the sparkplug for this album… by a little bit of an odd route, because I was thinking of New Age writer David Spangler, who wrote a 1976 esoteric book named ‘Little Church’. I still haven’t managed to locate that one but Donovan’s song came up and it was the exact thing I didn’t know I was looking for. I imagine Spangler was probably inspired by the 1972 Franco Zefferelli movie in which this song appeared.
02 Martika – Love… Thy Will Be Done (1991, USA) SUSAN
Love, thy will be done
I can no longer hide
I can no longer run
No longer can I resist the guiding light
That gives me the power to keep up the fight
Oh love, thy will be done
Since I have found you my life has just begin
And I see all of your creations as one perfect complex
No one less beautiful or more special than the next
You know we are so wise to accept
Thy will love be done
Love, thy will be mine
And make me strive for the glorious and divine
I cannot be more, more satisfied
Even when there's no peace outside my window
There's peace inside
And that's why I no longer run
Love thy will be done
Love, thy will be done
I can no longer hide
I can no longer run
No longer
Love, thy will be done
Susan awaits whatever the future will bring.
Martika’s ‘Toy Soldiers’ (step by step, we all fall down) was everywhere on the airwaves in 1988 but this one is the one I love because it’s so definitely tuned into a higher wavelength. And Prince co-wrote and produced!
03 U2 – Beautiful Day (2000, Ireland) JACK
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony
But there's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stopped
And you're not moving anywhere
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you realise
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
On the road
But you got no destination
In the mud
In the maze of her imagination
You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you
It's a beautiful day
Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case
See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleet clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oilfields at first light
See the bird with the leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colours came out
It was a beautiful day
What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
It was a beautiful day
Jack can feel that something is missing but he doesn’t yet know what it is.
Ok yes I know you’re going to say ‘U2! WHAT! I thought you liked small bands’ and YES BUT in my defense, one, this is sort of off the clock here, and two, ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ has a kind of glow to it, the whole album.
04 Heather Nova – What A Feeling (1998, Bermuda) SUSAN
Now's the time all this will turn to fruit
All the poppies gonna push up through
And I can see the ground below
The places that I know
Disappearing
And I can see the winter fade
I don't feel so afraid
It's clearing
Ooh what a feeling
Life is only halfway in our hands
Years have passed while I was making plans
And I could never find the words
I always felt absurd
And always outside
And now I know I shouldn't care
There's a song already there
Waiting inside
Ooh what a feeling
And I can feel the clock unwind
The parts of me I've tied
Are running
And now the birds are in my head
The laughter that was dead
Is coming
Susan has an intimation of what it might be.
True story: Heather Nova was kind of my actual introduction to music, as music, and as a vector for… changing oneself… in the late 1990s. (Long story, short version: grew up in a cult.) Both ‘Oyster’ and ‘Siren’ were speaking my language, the language of healing and psychological recovery, at a time that I needed it. This song is still the best.
05 Ultravox – Dream On (England, 1986) JACK
Hold my breath and pray for something better
Close my eyes and wish for something better
Much better
Dream on
Dream on
I saw a day when there was no fight to fight
Dream on
Dream on
Nothing more, no hurting for no reason
What reason
Dream on
Dream on
I heard the world laugh together for a while
Dream on
Dream on
I saw the strength and the love behind the smiles
Dream on
Dream on
Something good for everyone to share
To care
Dream on
Dream on
Jack has dreams.
The imagery of dreaming resurfaces since this is about illusions, the ones inside us, the ones outside.
The official video I think has Jennifer Connelly in it (good) and is also kind of really creepy and voyeuristic (bad) so that’s why I don’t use it.
06 Alanis Morissette – Utopia (Canada, 2002) SUSAN
We gather around
All in a room
Fasten our belts
Engage in dialogue
We'd all slow down
Rest without guilt
Not lie, without fear
Disagree sans judgement
We would stay and respond and expand and include
And allow and forgive and enjoy and evolve
And discern and inquire and accept and admit
And divulge and open and reach out and speak up
This is utopia
This is my utopia
This is my ideal
My end in sight
Utopia
This is my utopia
This is my Nirvana
My ultimate
We open our arms
We'd all jump in
We'd all coast down
Into safety nets
We would share and listen and support and welcome
Be prepared by passion or invest in outcomes
We would grieve and be charmed and amused by difference
Be gentle and make room for every emotion
This is utopia
We'd provide forums
We'd all speak out
We'd all be heard
We'd all feel seen
We'd rise post-obstacle more defined, more grateful
We'd all heal, be humbled and be unstoppable
We'd hold close and let go and know when to do which
We'd release and disarm and stand up and feel safe
Susan has dreams.
9/11 released, among other things, a brief outpouring of compassionate music and this is one of those artifacts. If there’s one thing Alanis does it’s honesty, at almost any cost. And doesn’t this seem like an attainable utopia? It doesn’t have to be a perfect one.
07 White Heart – Heaven Of My Heart (1993, USA) JACK and SUSAN (separately)
Did I hear angel wings
Thought I heard Gabriel sing
This can't be some crazy dream
These feelings are too real
No Alice in Wonderland
It's the same world it's always been
But my vision's been born again
Like a lantern in the dark
Heaven's come to my heart
Locked in a sky so blue
Is a land made for me and you
And we're going there but until the dream comes true
There's a sacred place
So full of love and grace
When the world spins and breaks apart
I'm going to the other heaven of my heart
This isn't some distant dream
Heaven's inside of me
And from the love in your eyes I see
There is heaven in your heart
Now we all can understand
Why he wanders this lonely land
The shepherd's calling again and again
For the lost in the dark
To find the heaven of their heart
Locked in a sky so blue
So let this love unfold
Come walk on these streets of gold
Build this heaven of our hearts
So full of love and grace
When the world spins and breaks apart
Come go with me to the heaven of our hearts
Heaven's here with me
Heaven's here with you
In this heaven of our hearts
It's a place where dreams come true
The heaven of our hearts
Something is changing for Jack.
Yes it’s Christian rock but, White Heart’s 1991 ‘Tales of Wonder’ and I think two songs on their 1993 ‘Highlands’, something special happened to that music and it is plugged in to an esoteric mainline and powered up.
08 Godspell – Turn Back O Man (1975, USA) SKYWATCH
Turn back o man, forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is Earth and none may count her days
Yet thou her child whose head is crowned with flame
Still wilt not heard thine inner God proclaim
Turn back o man (oh, I like that)
Turn back o man (handle with care)
Forswear thy foolish ways
(hold me while I slip into something more comfortable)
Earth might be fair and all men glad and wise
Age after age their tragic empires rise (tada dada)
Built while they dream and in their dreaming weep
Would man but wake from out his haunted sleep!
Turn back o man
Turn back o man (hard as a rock!)
Turn back o man
Forswear thy
Earth shall be fair and all her people one
Not til that hour shall God's whole will be done
Now, even now, once more from Earth to sky
Peels forth in joy man's old undaunted cry
Earth shall be fair and all her people one
(come here Jesus I got something to show ya!)
Turn back o man, forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is Earth and none may count her days
Yet thou her child whose head is crowned with flame
Still wilt not hear thine inner God proclaim
Turn back o man
Turn back o man
Turn back o man
Forswear thy foolish ways
(play it honey!)
SKYWATCH is playing a long game inside SYSTEM.
Not gonna lie, I like all of Godspell and the hippie era, but this song especially, because it combines Clifford Bax’s antiwar hymn from WWI (a period drenched in esoteric contact) with a performance doing the whole ‘Wisdom pleading with humanity’ thing from Proverbs. And you get dream/simulation imagery as a bonus!
09 Dream – Forest For The Trees (1997, USA) JACK
I'm the first person
You're the second person
Earlier today I was in the third person
I'm the first person
You're the second person
Earlier today I was in the third person
Stop cursing, start diversing
Oedipus is bliss
the sunshine will affect your mind
expand your thoughts, stretch it out
don't doubt the amount
my brain is caught
I'm just blessed
Trip hoppin' so I flow like a stream
It's just a dream
We are all here in the act of creation
Let's fly away on our imagination
You take me to the highest heights
and into the depths of the deepest abyss
When I am dreaming I don't know if I'm truly asleep
Or if I'm awake
And when I get up I don't know if I'm truly awake
Or if I'm still dreaming
Dream, dream, dream, dream,
Life is but a dream
Travelling the waves of an infinite ocean
I feel the deepest emotion
I see a shadow of reality
Please hold me closely and take me away
Jack is starting to lose himself to the simulation.
90s trip-hop at its finest, and you might ask why a drug song is next to a whole bunch of esoteric ones, and that’s the thing, isn’t it interesting how the psychedelic and esoteric and religious and virtual reality experiences are so intertwined?
10 Movieland – Movieland (1986, USA) SUSAN
Movieland my waking dream
Sight and sound of sight unseen
Let me take you where I've been
Out there on the silver screen
Na na nana nana na na movieland
Na na nana nana na na movieland
Na na nana nana na na movie
Movieland my plastic world
Boys are boys and girls are girls
Boys with toys and girls with pearls
In movieland my plastic world
Na na nana nana na na movieland
I''ll sing a song for movieland
We'll sing and dance for movieland
We'll sing a song for movieland
Na na nana nana na na
Na na nana nana na na na
Movieland my one desire
Spires that dream and dreams perspire
Nights are filled with hidden fire
Oh movieland my one desire
Na na nana nana na na movieland
Susan is starting to get a clue.
So it matches Zingari ‘Everybody’s Waiting’ and also, which one actually is the movie? The sleeping dream or the waking dream?