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