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What Thou Art

from Then, and Then: a memoir by DATSON

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  • Boxed set Limited edition 2 x CD + Book 64pp ISBN:9780975186206 (pbk.)
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    The album comes with a beautifully packaged book of poetry. The words on the page are satisfying enough, unlike most rock lyrics, but benefit from accompaniment. ... Like any collection of poetry, you can dip in and out, but listening to the story unfold is the way to do it. This is definitely not, as they might say in Star Trek, rock & roll as we know it. It will adjust your set. TOBY CRESWELL

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about

I believe one of the functions of poetry/music  is the suspension of time. Robert Graves goes into this in some depth in his book "the white goddess". He expounds a theory of proleptic & analeptic thought, when one arrives at the answer to some riddle or problem without understanding or being conscious of quite how you got there. It is a feature of some poets work, but has been known to occur in those eureka moments of scientists and mathematicians too.  Over the years I've jotted down a number of apparently nonsense rhymes only to see their close parallels appear in reality at a later date. 

"what I write it will come true, you best be careful I don't write of you".

Jung might suggest we are tapping into the collective consciousness at these moments. We are born with minds already partly shaped by our geneological heritage.

lyrics

Time line, 1977
Spring I guess
Sunrise on Black Mountain Road
the air a-pulse with incandescent wildlife
Hello universe!

Imagination
it’s a field of abandoned cars
Native tobacco, and ferns burst through rust
Oxidation
We’re all on the slow burn down here

So, to the floor of a fifty-seven De Soto:
discarded tools, feathers,
crushed beer cans, greasy rags
and a message from the out-lands -
As without, so within

And I’m hearing Patti Smith and
I’ve been reading the symbolist poets and
I’m fairly pretentious
Another lonely boy
out on the weekend

But, it’s a big land
and given to dreaming
Through the windscreen
the morning clouds pile up
our heaped canopy of joy
And fearful
that my head will explode
from too much cumulonimbus
out and spinning, spinning
Spin the world

Slow
till racing backwards
retreat into our own eternal sunset
‘Hey Sheba, hey Salome, hey Venus
eclipsin’ my way’

And a quarter of a century later
I dreamt of this same morning
crouching in the wet grass
hugging myself hysterical with connection
and voicing all time

in the wet grass

credits

from Then, and Then: a memoir, track released June 1, 2020
CREDITS; © Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes, Produced by Geoffrey Datson, Recorded and mixed at Greenroom Studio Cooroy.

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DATSON Australia

GEOFFREY DATSON is a sound artist, combining spoken word, electronica and instrumentation in his recordings. Many poets recite their work to music, but few are also composers. Datson's work is a synthesis of forms of sonic expression in which the voice and the sound field are interdependent. ... more

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