A busy day yesterday, in the morning I thought it would be good, fun, to create a rock/guitar song for the open-mic part of the event, something in contrast to our music of the first half. This will be raw, not played wonderfully, as I've no time to rehearse this, but I took the opportunity to revise the words to a song called Nietzsche's Donkey which I sketched out a few weeks ago. It's about an incident at the end of Nietzsche's life where he allegedly flung his arms around the neck of a horse that was being beaten. I crossed the emotion with What's The Matter Here, an obscure but great song by 10,000 Maniacs. My words:
That donkey
in the street,
I know him;
he lives with the gravelled man.
I hear him
beat him,
curse him:
"You lazy useless good-for-nothing!"
Is he
a superman?
The superman I'd hoped for?
A superman?
Is he
a superman?
A superman?
Master of the weak?
At night
the donkey dreams
of freedom,
pastures lush and sweet
he'll never feel,
he'll never see;
love he'll never meet
until he's killed
by superman!
A superman!
Master of the world!
A race
of supermen!
Godless supermen!
Masters of a sinless race!
I'd tear up all my papers
if I knew the harm they'd cause
an act of kindness can do more
than words of cold philosophy.
There aren't many words to add imagery to, but I've done my best structurally, the 'At night' part is different in tone, as is the closing speech. In tempo and mood it's similar to 'I Care'.
Then a trip to collect art from the Bickerton Village Hall exhibition, a brief hello to Katharine Laird from my first art club, which was life changing in ways good and bad, as I was unjustly, if not bizarrely, excluded from it due to its extreme power politics - the man in charge didn't like me and a vote was made to change the written constitution to expel me on a technicality. A hello and chat too with the artist Ann Roach, who is ever busy with her many groups and exhibitions.
Then a dart back home for lunch and to collect Stefano Santachiara from the train station, and a visit to Congleton Library to reconnoitre the venue before our performance. It was great, inspiring and tiring to meet Stefano. He talked about his many books and projects. We visited Sandbach on the way back, a in interesting place to see. Here we are at the crosses:
Stefano talked about his current film project as writer and director. The film is largely complete apart from some post-production.
