Morning Journey & Arrival

[1. Last Dark First Light]

[Instrumental]

[2. Dawn Over Blubberhouses]

There's no camera that can see the grey line
The overture for the coming dawn
That subtle shift that provokes the birdsong
The unseen spark that awakes the corn

So let the headlights on the road
Slicing through the morning murk
Be a metaphor for daybreak, or
Be our allegory, for work

There's no disk that can save our feelings
Of an early Tuesday's run into town
In the darkness on less than a good sleep
Faces set in an unseen frown

So let the rain under the wheels
Spell the end of what we see as the night
Be a metaphor for humdrum
Be an allegory, of life

[3. When It's Green]

My son asked me once:
"Dad? Do we see the same thing? ...
When it's green?"

[4. Car Horn Serenade]

[Instrumental]

[5. Ants]

We carry more weight than our muscles can bear
Our infrastructure look familiar when viewed from the air
'Cos we are Ants! Crawling, marching.....

We strip our carrion of the last scraps of their flesh
Move onto the next victim and start afresh
We are Ants!
AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrgggggggnnnnts!!!

[6. Bird Shit]

I wish we could see this;
The heaving bird's eye view from any given height
Our ant hill lives below us
The crawling cars and snail trails of our human might

All the flyovers and tunnels that circle round the church
At the centre of our cities where we fight our way to work
Where cameras watch our progress on spaghetti-like ring roads
To business parks, call centres and retail outlet nodes

Park drive late phone talk push bank home work
Car Park drive late phone talk push bank home
Work Car Park drive late phone talk push bank
Home work Car Park drive lat phone talk push

It all just looks like bird shit!
Just look on Google Earth - the higher up you climb!
And each day we traverse it!
An hour from waking up we're driving thirty miles

All the people ripped from sleeping in their luxury-mobiles
On telephones, computers, all "getting a great deal"
To the car parks by the buildings where we hate away our days
To buy a little house, a TV and a package holiday

And all the blue plaques in all the buildings
Say they're "Investors in Our Souls"
But I don't believe them, not 'til I see it
Until I put my finger in the holes

All the time that we give
To companies who call themselves our friends
All the time that we live with their aims at heart, their intent

And then they tell us that we're important, or
"We're all part of the whole"
I don't believe them, not 'til I see it
Until I put my finger in the holes

[7. Slow Activity in a Lobby]

[Instrumental]

[8. Two People In Two Cubicles]

In the flickering light she sees Canadian trees
Log cabins, warm fires and smiles at the aprés ski
She punches in her name to the company mainframe
And logs into her pact with the Devil again

She is lost, she is floating
She's like us all, tied to the fabric we wear
She takes it as she finds
Lives for the good times
She's a product
She's a consumer
And then she's a girl

In the cubicle next door it's time to 'meet the band';
In a Rush T-shirt, pony tail, 2112 tattooed on his hands
He's a star through thick and thin
But he still gets that data in
A modern day warrior, today's Tom Sawyer is a clerk

So let the tapping of the keys
The hub-bub of the office chat
Be a metaphor for disillusion
Be a metaphor for life

[9. On The Treadmill]

We all found out too late (that the contract's binding)
We could never appreciate that the ants we saw as kids, and
Everything we did were just putting us on the right road
Putting our houses on our backs
With our mortgages in tow to fill the cracks
Between the stuff we can't provide
We try to cross the great divide
And hope we're on the right road
All the things we wanted and all the goals we craved!
We were on the treadmill, we became the slaves
Oh! Did we get lucky?! Or just a metaphor for life?

[10. Fireworks provided by the United Governments of the World to make us feel better for 3.7 minutes. Please return all viewing glasses.]

[Instrumental]

[11. More of the aforementioned Bird Shit (reprise)]

We are ants!

All the flyovers and tunnels that circle round the church
At the centre of our cities where we fight our way to work
Where cameras watch our progress on spaghetti-like ring roads
To business parks, call centres and retail outlet nodes

And all the blue plaques in all the buildings
Say they're "Investors in Our Souls"
But I don't believe them, not 'til I see it
Until I put my finger in the holes

All the time that we give
To companies who call themselves our friends
All the time that we live with their aims at heart, their intent

And then they tell us that we're important, or
"We're all part of the whole"
I don't believe them, not 'til I see it
Until I put my finger in the holes