Ghost Train (Kevin Ayers Lyric and Link)

I'm sitting here picking the holes in my sneakers --

Watching the moves of those Midnight Creepers.

There's a smell of a song rustling through my head --

Something about being somewhere else instead.

And the ghost train comes blowing on in -- through this town;

Picking up the passengers -- Then putting them down.

And the wind steals a leaf,  Like the ghost of a thief,

And the autumnal wind blows around and around.

Oh those horses of smoke! -- Sneaking in through the trees.

There's a shaking and a shuddering that goes to my knees.

And I wonder what's happening?  Did I miss the joke?

Another year sleeping; 

I never awoke.

There was plenty of war; And plenty of death.

Plenty of hunger and Wasting of breath.

And all I did was scratch myself and Dream a few dreams.

And I wrote a few notes on what I think it all means.

But reading them all now -- They don't amount to much.

There's no meat to eat;  No flesh to touch.

A few dreams of you  -- And a few fish to fry;

I just sat there watching 

Another year go by.

Oh  those horses of smoke! -- Sneaking in through the trees.

There's a shaking and a shuddering that goes to my knees.

And I wonder what's happening?  Did I miss the joke?

Another year sleeping;  

I never awoke.

Reader note:  The gray (or should I say grey?) link in the second stanza takes you to a good 1998 live performance of this Kevin Ayers-Ollie Halsall composition that took place at a venue called The Gig in Los Angeles.  I would highly recommend, however, purchasing the original studio version of the song, which appeared on the 1992 Kevin Ayers lp Still Life With Guitar.  That record, which is available on the Market Square label in the UK, is one of Ayers' best and contains such other fine Ayers songs as Feeling This Way, I Don't Depend On You and the best version of Leadbelly's Irene, Goodnight I know.

Twice Foretold: The Bride Stripped Bare and The End Of The Affair

I. 

Given: 

        1. The Waterfall, 

        2. The Illuminating Gas

(Étant donnés: 

        1. La chute d’eau, 

        2. Le gaz d’éclairage)

        -- Marcel Duchamp, from The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (La Mariee Mise A Nu Par Ses Celibataires, Meme), 1915-23

II.

A story has no beginning or end:  arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.  I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer  who -- when he has been seriously noted at all -- has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own free will choose that wet black January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?  It is convenient, it is correct according to the rules of my craft to begin just there, but if I had believed then in a God, I could also have believed in a hand, plucking at my elbow, a suggestion, 'Speak to him:  he hasn't seen you yet.'

        For why should I have spoken to him?  If hate is not too large a term to use in relation to any human being, I hated Henry -- I hated his wife Sarah too.  And he, I suppose, came soon after the events of that evening to hate me: as he had surely must have hated his wife and that other, in whom in those days we were lucky enough not to believe.  So this is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah, I can be trusted:  I am writing against the bias because it is my professional pride to prefer the near-truth, even to the expression of my near-hate.

        -- Graham Greene, The End Of The Affair, 1951