Hidden Order

Track 12 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

Don't try to plan it
Or it becomes a habit
And before you know it
You're lost inside a hidden order

Forgot to buy your dinner yesterday
Had to phone the restaurant right away
Told them very carefully the things you need
Later on you find they've lost your order
It was a hidden order

But still it's out of order

While you're optimising
Things go astray, it's not your day
And while you're being careful
The psychopaths come out to play
You're a sensitive soul
And they can't be expected to know
About anything in particular
At all

Your brand new telescope
Turned out to be a microscope
And what you thought was a planet
Was actually a weed in your herbaceous border
(herbaceous border)

You came up with a theory yesterday
So you put it into practise right away
But the world has had the gall to disagree with you
And all your life you wish you'd been much bolder
But now you're just much older
And now your flat's just colder

It's just a hidden order

The Western Tower

Track 11 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

It started as a drawing draughted by an architect
Everyone assumed that he knew what he was doing
The structure started rising
They must have had some second thoughts
Is it meant to be that ugly?
Are we meant to feel sick?
Fifteen stories high, a pile of concrete in the sky
People come from miles around just to gaze upon the Western Tower
An architectural crime, it must have made sense at the time
Somebody was very proud when they came up with the Western Tower
A shop that sells chicken (kind of like a KFC)
A miserable reception, a lift that smells of wee
A message placed in Reading
Nobody knows what it means
The windows filled with letters: HAVOC MONK UNSEEN
They want to knock it down, so they can build something worse
They might not have to bother: the vandals got their first
Kicked in all the toilets, lighting fires in a bin
Left behind a shell, demolished from within

Watchtower

Track 10 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

What brought you to my door
Where you visiting the flats in numerical order
Did you have much luck before
Do you call it luck or something more religious sounding
You can't leave people alone
Cos your god commands you to spread the good news to your neighbours
As soon as I open the door
I see the watchtower and your desperate smile to hold my attention
Do you think there is a god
Who created the whole world so we'd have somewhere to live
I think about it almost every day
And in a funny way its true
That you can have a conversation with someone who isn't there
But really, in the end, how much can you learn
From talking to yourself
Do you understand the scale
Of the thing you call creation and your place within it
Cos there's quite a lot of stars
And it seems a waste to create so much stuff for no reason
In the battle for my soul
Telling me what to believe is tantamount to cheating

Chinese Room

Track 9 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

Come the demographic crisis
Too many old people to care for
Technological solution
Robots designed to deal with bedsores
In the Chinese Room the old man
Explains that understanding
Is just something that a brain does
But not a machine
He's in a room with symbols
Carrying none of the intentionality
Needed for understanding
Computers will never think in his reality
His carers become alarmed
Locally built, they are quite artificial
(Some parts came from Japan)
When they cry for the dead, is it just superficial?
One day they find him lying
His mechanism is defective
Gently they close his eyelids
Mourning the loss of his perspective

We Become You

Track 8 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

Watching you all day
Cos our government needs to know
What you had for breakfast
What you'll have for dinner
Microphones installed
And cameras in place
Every word is transcribed
Added to your big file
There's so many of us watching
We become you
Trying to put ourselves in yourselves
We become you
Filtering your words
Through the prism of doctrine
Are you passing on instructions
While dandling your grandchild?
I hang on every note
As you practise your violin
Perhaps the frantic bowing
Conceals a burst of Morse code

Manhattan

Track 7 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

When they make a movie about this time
They'll have a guy wearing a suit and tie
He'll give his report to the Princeton men
Cos making a bomb is a serious thing
Oppenheimer asked me about my wife
This was near the end of her short wife
I borrowed a car from this german guy
And later on he turned out to be a spy
They censored all my letters to my family
They had a list of words no one can see
Arlene wrote a letter on a jigsaw
The censors couldn't take anymore
I sat by her bed to watch her die
It took a few months before I could cry
A flash in the sky
But there is no sound
We could blow up the world
No one could see
Except for me
We could blow up the world
Bob was the one who rained on the parade
It's a terrible thing that we just made
From the man at the top this came as a surprise
But when you go to New York you begin to realise
All of these buildings gone in a flash
A civilization reduced to ash
We put all that power in the President's hand
I couldn't get the workmen to understand

Book of the Future

Track 6 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

In 1995
Humanity will thrive
The world will be a magical place
Technological change
Fantastic and strange
Unfolding at breathtaking pace
An intelligent machine
Keeps your bedroom all clean
And helps you to get education
We won't need any cars
Just teleport to Mars
And wonder if you're still the same person
In the book of the future
There's a perfect world for me and you
It's all in the book of the future
Now we just have to make it true
In our giant glass domes
Our watches, our phones
Computers will take over soon
You can rearrange your face
So there's nothing out of place
And a baby's been born on the moon

Tulipomania

Track 5 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

Many people grow attached to that which gives them the most trouble
Like a mother doesn't love a healthy child as much as a sick one
The tulip increased in reputation and extravagant prices
'Till the man of fortune felt he had to maintain a collection
Extraordinary delusions - tulipomania
The madness of crowds - tulipomania
A sailor brought the news of a fresh consignment to a wealthy merchant
Then as a reward he looked around and helped himself to an onion
But it was a tulip bulb worth a fortune - they look kind of similar
So the sailor was thrown in prison - that meal was expensive

Children Are Monsters

Track 4 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

Turn on, tune in, drop dead
Some rude stuff from Germaine Greer
Madonna of the Napalm
Long hair, everywhere
Listen to Dr Leary
He'll tell us what to do
The Stones might go to prison
It's a bummer, this summer
But nothing you could do could ever prepare you
Rumpole himself couldn't save you
Children are monsters
You can't let them run your magazine
You couldn't spell the name of
An idiot from Cuba
If you need moral guidance
What would Rupert do?
A child that takes his first sip
Doesn't really get drunk
But feels like such a big strong man
In proportion to his innocence
Letter from a Greek prison
Blue films by the Yard
It's all been explained by
Marshall McLuhan

Flatland

Track 3 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

A humble square was resting in his house
When he saw a circle had appeared
And somehow seemed to change its size
Where have you come from, illustrious visitor?
I'm confused, my roof was recently repaired
I came from space
To visit you here
In Flatland
You hear my voice
In your insides
In Flatland
I'll demonstrate my nature to you
I am an infinity of shapes
In a solid way
You only see one slice at a time in your humble plane
But I can change size
Just by moving
You might be a cube
But you're just a square
In Flatland
I can see right
Into your insides
In Flatland

Shadows Have Genes

Track 2 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

A pigeon carries twigs to its nest
A cuttlefish blows sand away
A beaver builds a damn and manipulates
the world around it for many miles
Sometimes an animal may benefit by
Moving an object that is
Another animal and they already have muscles
So they're easier to move
A flower uses insects to move its pollen
A library uses humans to move its books
Finally it is the fish's own muscles
That the angler uses to close the gap between them
The nightingale, its song affects me
As though of hemlock I had drunk
Imagine how much devastation it could
Cause to other nightingales
A parasite queen needn't exert her own jaws
If she can make some workers kill their own mother
A martian accustomed to universal trust
Would struggle to understand the art of secrecy
A tree casts a shadow
The shadow helps the tree to make more trees
Some shadows are better than others
Shadows have genes

Where I Sign My Name

Track 1 from the album Havoc Monk Unseen.

When the sun goes down
And there's no one around
There's a bus that takes us right down into the town
We get our spray cans
And we climb very high
Propellent to the top of the world
Some like their skateboards
But that's not for me
I want to leave my mark where people can see
Something to gaze on
A work that catches the eye
Till the council pulls the bastard down
I'm the shadow
You have to live in
Where I sign my name
I'm the image
The world is made in
Where I sign my name
The thrill of danger
The thought that we might be caught
While you're tucked up in bed just like you were taught
Meet the new owners
Of all we deface and
Inherit from the living dead
Just choose a new name
Something cool and absurd
And introduce some walls to the written word
Paint your own poster
In an impossible place
To prove you've got the biggest balls