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By Luke, January 18, 2011

Haiti has been the news lately because the big quake there was a year ago.
The Duvalier song (on Reha album) was written about Haitian history. Jean Claude

“The former ruler left Haiti in 1986 after a 15-year rule plagued by corruption and a crumbling economy.” After the quake Duvalier bizarrely pledged $8 million to the Red Cross.

He now lives in Paris and best estimates of his fortune are in the hundreds of millions – all suspected of being dishonestly obtained from the nation. Song lyrics for Duvalier are below with a player so you can listen to this song.

You took the money from my people
You took the bell from the steeple
You took my only hope away
Jean Claude Duvalier

And if greed were a virtue
I know that nothing would hurt you
If corruption were quaint
You’d be some kind of living saint

Duvalier Duvalier
you took the money and you ran away
Duvalier Duvalier
you took the money and you ran

Who was that beautiful lady
The one by your side
The one O so well dressed
The one you had to hide

Who was that beautiful lady
The queen of every shopping spree
Live a life of luxury back in gay Paree

Duvalier Duvalier
you took the money and you ran away
Duvalier Duvalier
You took it back to France

Now that suffering has come to you
And you’re scraping for a franc or two
When you know just what to do
I guess you’ll turn around

You took the money from my people
You took the bell from the steeple
You took my only hope away
Jean Claude Duvalier

Jean Claude Duvalier
Jean Claude Duvalier

For more background on Duvalier go here.

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By Luke, March 8, 2009

Here are some thoughts about my song “The Sound.”

100 years ago, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world.

These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics.

Pretty good debut for a 26 year old scientist, huh?

His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner.

Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a ‘fudge factor’ that ensured a ‘steady state’ universe,  one that had no beginning or end.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying,

“This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”

He referred to the ‘fudge factor’ to achieve a steady-state universe as the biggest blunder of his career.

Einstein’s theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there’s an even more important implication of Einstein’s discovery.

Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang.

That’s right — time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by an intelligence outside of space and time.

About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book “The World As I See It” that the harmony of natural law

“Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

He went on to write,

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe– a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Pretty significant statement, wouldn’t you say?

The Sound – Lyrics and (See video The Sound on YouTube)

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By Luke, November 15, 2008

“Thought constitutes man’s greatness”

Blaise Pascal: 17th century philosopher and mathematician.

I stumbled across pascal from my reading of quotation books.

Reading quotations is a good way to trigger ideas for songs. Pascal writes about how man is a reed…

A seemingly weak thing in nature

and yet
he is great thru his capacity to think
and it is this capacity
which gives him a valid place in an infinite universe
so that there is a counterbalance to extreme alienation.
The capacity to think
softens the blow of the outside vastness
by offering us a vast universe inside also!
a taste of some of his insights.

“Reason never wholly overcomes imagination, while the contrary is quite common”.
Voila!
explains how: a hamburger chain can take over the world!
“Atheists should say things that are perfectly clear
Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material”
Bingo!
No one can prove the soul to be material!
Pascal draws attention to the hidden nature of God ” “this is the
very name which he gives himself in scripture “Deus absconditus”

(hidden God) “He will only be perceived by those who seek him with all
their whole heart”

Love the urgency with which he implores us to think about our fate

“The immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to
us,affecting us so deeply,that one must have lost all feeling not to
care about knowing the facts of the matter”

Such thoughts as these gave me the inspiration to write “Pascal’s Song” at a time when my marriage was over and the family was broken and my only hope was in the “the beyond” . Such a vast and imponderable condition and it was explored to the max.

Positively lived and breathed alienation for years and that is how “High Risk” was born. No pictures on the cover (good policy) and a bunch of songs about the vastness within and the vastness without.

There is a third verse that never got sung on this track……the lyrics go like this

“The universe could crush us
And leave us for dead
Yet chooses to love us
And protect us instead
With a love so deep
And a love so wide
A kind of love
That can’t be defined”

Hope you have a nice day and thank you for taking an interest! Your thoughts please! Go Well
Luke

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By Luke, July 6, 2008

(Scroll to the bottom of this page to read song notes by Luke.)

I’m in love with the Mona Lisa
Through plate glass they let me see her
Winning smile millions feed her
I’m in love with the Mona Lisa

Take your plastic money your color T.V.
Sell it with your house if you want to go see
A Leonardo Da Vinci
Well that’s good enough for me

Sold my house sold my car
I even sold my Martin guitar
Sold my house sold my car
I even sold my Stratocaster
I was going to get to see a Leonardo Da Vinci
It’s good enough for me if it’s good enough for you

Cruising high in a 747
Cruising high feeling like I’m in 7th Heaven
Air Hostess pours a G & T I’m feeling right friendly
But you’re not (the) Madonna

Got to Paris took a taxi to the Louvre
Feeling jet lag (but just like Madonna I’m in the groove)
And there’s Japanese Cantonese Lebanese
Vietnamese Taiwanese Siagonese Ceylonese
Turning into Sri Lankese Kiwis & god damn Yankees
They’re not singing my song they’re singing Paul Simon . . . They’re singing

I got a Nikon camera
Gotta take a photograph
Momma don’t take my Kodachrome away . . . cause

When I got to see that picture
cut those social financial strictures
When I got to see her
She was just a . . . Like that national TV Commercial
With a crack in the plate glass
But she’s got no arse . . .

. . . I’m in love with the Mona Lisa
I’m in love with a Leo Nardo Da’Vinci
I’m in love with a British Airways Hostess
Who’s nice to me
I’m in love with Madonna
In the groove
Jet lagged dirty yeah
See you later

Up until now my knowledge of Europe is based on childhood memories of holidays in Rome mixed with memories of movies seen since….”Mona Lisa” was inspired by Eli’s comments about The Louvre and how visitors seem to virtually ignore the variety of its great works in preference for the most famous ones and in this song you’ve got the whole cast of snake oil merchants trying to sell us anything and everything…………

“Do you want to buy a watch or a dee wee dee”. The last line of the song which I didn’t add in this recording goes “And now they’re trying to tell me that its the old boy himself in drag”.

My understanding of Leonardo is that he made his fortunes inventing weapons of war  (be great to get some information from readers about thoughts on Leonardo).

The “Big OE” is something that is a part of our culture here (NZ) being that we are so isolated. Why do we have to have an OE (again it would be cool to get some ideas on this issue). Write a comment below.

———————
Listen to the song here.

And here is the slide show version of Mona Lisa.

( mp3 file 7.4mb in size.)