FROM THE SAME box of old papers I wrote about last week comes another set of lyrics. This time for The Void – a song composed in 1974 when I was 18.
Strangely, since I hadn’t attended a service since my early teens, I have a vivid memory of singing The Void to the Minister of our local Presbyterian church in Trentham, Upper Hutt, who had dropped by to sort out the Sunday hymns with my mother, the church organist. He was interested to know what I was trying to say in the song. “It’s my vision of the future”, I told him. “It’s about the loss of the things that really matter to New Zealanders: their quarter-acre sections, their family homes, their faith in the future.”
He frowned. “That’s a pretty bleak vision. Can you tell me why everyone in the song drinks to the unemployed? Why are they so glad to see them?”
My answer reflected the dark predictions contained in Socialist Action – the Trotskyist newspaper I purchased regularly from the young comrades positioned outside Wellington Railway Station. As the Keynesian golden weather turned dark and stormy, mass unemployment was seen as the harbinger of Capitalism’s doom. In drinking to the unemployed, the characters in the song are, subconsciously, drinking to ‘The Revolution’.
Not that I explained it to the puzzled clergyman in quite those terms. Even so, he gave me a long level look – and shuddered.
As the shadows trickled down,
The dusty gutters of the town,
I found a bar, some DB Brown,
Raised my glass
And looked around.
I saw the scholar and his book.
Caught his very worried look.
He took the bait from his master’s hook,
And now he understands
That he’s caught.
He cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!
“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!
“Here’s to all you unemployed!
I’m overjoyed
To see you here.
I saw the woman fully grown,
Sitting there all on her own,
Tired of living like a drone,
She wore her boredom
Like a precious stone.
She cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!
“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!
“Here’s to all you unemployed!
I’m overjoyed
To see you here.
I saw the children at their play
Tell the Sun to go away.
“We much prefer the night today!”
That’s what I heard
The future say.
And I cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!
“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!
“Here’s to all you unemployed!
I’m overjoyed
To see you here.
Chris Trotter 1974
Pretty insightful considering it was written nearly 50 years ago. The nothing is pretty widespread now.
Prescient.
I’ve just been thinking along various lines and put them forward for consideration. One is about how government needs to support ordinary people in any endeavours they make to help themselves and become more resilient and proud in their own capabilities. At present we read about how we are not productive enough, how we shouldn’t try to make anything ourselves because it can be done cheaper overseas. How robots are going to replace human workers because … all sorts of reasons, and it is inevitable. But we will lack the means to support ourselves, our families and indeed our communities will shrivel. Considering that philosophers point out that we make our own society, our own cultures, our own ways, then it leads one to ask – why would we do such destructive things to each other and our society? Is it more money needed? But those trying to do away with people are people themselves, and usually they have money sufficient for their needs. And one wonders if there is another disease more insidious than Covid which attacks parts of the brain.
I’ve just read s book produced from the diaries of a pioneer woman. She lost her husband to a fever; described by a doctor in the USA as ‘gold fever’. He warned that her husband might recover his health but perhaps not return to a stable mental condition but be always desirous of hunting for gold which might be around the corner waiting to be found – a rainbow’s end search. Some years later he did die because of that restless and remorseless mental condition. He had everything that a happy man could wish for and still went away on another search.
I think this is the prevailing mental illness of capitalism and explains the inhuman ways of our business leaders and their enablers in government and those that have been appointed to run our public services as if they were businesses – so much better than government can do we are told. They are slightly demented and are not in full command of their faculties. (I think Jung’s theories explained by this business site might be helpful.Carl Jung identified four main archetypes—the persona, the shadow, the anima or animus and the self. These are a result of collective, shared ancestral memories that may persist in art, literature and religion but aren’t obvious to the eye. These recurring themes help us understand the Jungian archetypes.18/07/2021 Carl Jung Theory Of Archetypes – Harappa Education
https://harappa.education › Harappa Diaries
Can we learn some better ways for running our society from the past. We haven’t got long as the trials and tribulations arising from our past mismanagement are compounding and require preventive action and alo protective and recovery skills and mindset, with new approaches that are practically based. If we need a resilient community which we do, then let us start developing our skills without stupid hindrance but with useful advice for those who have some gumption left.
The big change in 1984 was announced as necessary because we were ‘over-regulated’. Well ordinary people still are, but big business manages to make awful stuff-ups without proper regulation and eternal oversight and they can’t be trusted not to cut corners, or even take note of those corners! There is something wrong in the state of New Zealand, and just changing to co-governance will not help as Maori are not better at regulating than our present situation.
For adequate controls and reasonable regulation we need experienced people, honest, careful and firm in their decisions who know when it is important to follow rules for real and likely hazards. At present there are too many rules thrown at ordinary people which stifle initiative and alternative measures for increasing earnings in our low wage, inadequate living income environment.
If you’re a presbyterian, Chris, you’re half a Scot. The great American talk show hosts, Carson and Letterman were presbyterian. Letterman is three quarters German but see his mother and you see the perfect reserved Scot. And it explains a lot of those two loner reserved blokes.
I rather wish you had the violent verbality of my father’s English Borderer people. You’d have blown away many a cretan on public media and we’d be the better for it.
About the image for The Void. It is poignant and looks like a hard-working, hard-bitten veteran of a lot of things thinking deeply and disconsolately while looking at his beer but not seeing it, but something else not joyful. I haven’t noticed much response to this post. Perhaps it strikes a bell with many people or perhaps the bell has struck them, down.