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5000 Years Ago

by Zru Vogue

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1.
5000 years ago My young and beautiful face I am lovely with erosion I have a head full of earth and whispers Heaven, where a bed is cheap I have slept on rocks I have slept on ocean Where these things are concerned I have no opinion My mother is the phantom In a dream full of lies I answer calmly with no emotion These hands full of earth I who have rarely existed In a state of relaxed euphoria I who am detached I who am weak I who am detached I who am weak Where these things are concerned I have no opinion 5000 years ago My young and beautiful face I am charming and delightful And fun at parties I have a head full of grass and sand I have slept on a bed of moss Where these things are concerned I have no emotion I who am oblivious I who am eternal I who am oblivious I who am eternal
2.
I feel like a strange collector Of blank masks with idiot eyes. I’m on an icy river And I don’t know where I’m going But I feel the lonely water Moving around the world I’m moving with the water I try to find the words I let the water take me Where I need to go It’s all I need to think about It’s all I need to know. I move around, move around, move around I move around, move around, move around There is an icy vision I feel the eyes on me The celestial virgin Is making faces at me It doesn’t really matter I’m in the underworld There is a perfect circle Into which I’ve been hurled So I let the water take me Where I need to go It’s all I need to think about It’s all I need to know I move around, move around, move around I move around, move around, move around
3.
Listen in to the sun inside It’s burning to get out Beat the drum, let it coincide Leave no more room for doubt Telephone to the spirit world And hang on every word Take the time to get in line Now you speak what you have heard Fill the hours of the night Shake the shackles from the day Clench the eyeteeth on the mouth Shape the answers far away Comes in curves and it comes in lines Comes in circles on the air Press your face up against the wind Till the edges start to tear Black nights, warm feelings Black nights, tall ceilings Dark nights in strange places Dark knights, with black faces Listen in to the sun inside… Beat the drum, let it coincide… Black nights, warm feelings Black nights, tall ceilings Black nights in strange places Black knights, with dark faces Black nights… Black nights…
4.
She black face, she back in the kitchen Break down the door, no one around Knock at the window, don’t make a difference She drop dead. She don’t make a sound She am a wigwam woman She going crazy, fall out of the bed Down in the basement playing with matches She’s in the dark with a needle and thread She like to go out shopping She like to peel her skin She gonna break down sobbing She look so frail and thin She got a mouth on fire moving at half speed She am a wigwam woman and she know what I need She got a nightmare vision sleeping in her throat She got her heart in a pocket of her dead animal coat She take a bath in the morning Feel like a fish in the sea She comin’ up from underwater She making faces at me She am a wigwam woman She going crazy, fall out of the bed Down in the basement playing with matches She’s in the dark with a needle and thread
5.
The Grandeur 03:22
Insects hover in the night Monks walk through a blazing fire Fat ladies are feeling tight Ball gowns for the schoolboys’ choir Shapely ladies rubbing thighs Baby Buddha walks the wire Liberace in a swarm of flies Falls asleep with the bed on fire Oh… Oh… Ghostly laughter among the trees Spirits hover through the fourth dimension Alfred Jarry’s on his knees Knows no pain, but he feels the tension Falls down, can’t stand up Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder Fat man overfills his cup Body frozen, but the mind will wander Oh… Oh… Oh, the grandeur of it Oh, the grandeur of it all
6.
I feel like a strange collector Of blank masks with idiot eyes. I’m on an icy river And I don’t know where I’m going But I feel the lonely water Moving around the world I’m moving with the water I try to find the words I let the water take me Where I need to go It’s all I need to think about It’s all I need to know. I move around, move around, move around I move around, move around, move around There is an icy vision I feel the eyes on me The celestial virgin Is making faces at me It doesn’t really matter I’m in the underworld There is a perfect circle Into which I’ve been hurled So I let the water take me Where I need to go It’s all I need to think about It’s all I need to know I move around, move around, move around I move around, move around, move around
7.
8.
9.
Find the faces of the statues in the hall See them come to life and crawl Down the stairway to the pool beside the gym Slide in for a midnight swim See the skeletons in closets by the door Open your eyes and explore Won’t you please invite them over for some tea? You know their hearts and minds are free Mona Lisa weeps beneath a moonlit sky Marcel Duchamp discovers why Some say it’s because she has a hot behind Her mustache has made her blind As the rooster eyes the axe upon the wall Ancient echoes distant call Easter Island heads are rolling on the floor Laughter rings forevermore Wait for me Look for me Stay with me Eternally Wait for me Look for me See though me Completely Wait for me (overseeing) Look for me (overhearing) Stay with me (overlooking) Eternally
10.
The picture keeps on going. It never leaves the screen. I’m in and out of sequence, and I’m floating in-between. I look out of the window. I see the world gone mad. I take another picture and I paste it to the pad. I look up an acquaintance. A thousand years ago, we lived among the tundra in a tiny bungalow. A life of grey illusion. A life that’s crystal clear. A hundred lives between us, neither there or are we here. I sense a subtle movement, a stirring in the past. I watch the circles circle endlessly inside the glass. A passport through the limelight, into a world unknown. Like ice into the mirror melts into the ether zone. I walked a million pastures. I died a thousand deaths. I walked a hundred highways and I breathed the hidden breaths. I shape this glass impression against a waterfall. I felt the deaths infinite through the long enchanted hall. I’m in the pocket of a doctor on a holiday cruise, and I would tell you all about it but it’s yesterday’s news. She be a rhinocratic woman in a red leather dress. She talking backwards in the dark where she come to confess. The priest is looking out the window where he’s shaking his head, because he thought he’d heard it all, he can’t believe what she said. I’m in the pocket of a doctor on a holiday cruise, and I would tell you all about it but it’s yesterday’s news. I said the picture keeps on going. It never leaves the screen. I’m in and out of sequence, and I’m floating in-between. I look out of the window. I see the world gone mad. I take another picture and I paste it to the pad. I look up an acquaintance. A thousand years ago, we lived among the tundra in a tiny bungalow. A life of grey illusion. A life that’s crystal clear. A hundred lives between us, neither there or are we here. I shape this glass impression against a waterfall. I felt the deaths infinite through the long enchanted hall. A passport through the limelight, into a world unknown. Like ice into the mirror melts into the ether zone. The picture keeps on going. It never leaves the screen. I’m in and out of sequence, and I float in-between.
11.

about

Best of the "lost" Zru Vogue living room recordings, recorded on 4-track cassette between 1982 and 1985.

credits

released January 15, 2022

Musicians: Andrew Lawrence Jackson (vocals, guitars, keyboards, clarinet), Rick Cuevas (piano, synthesizer, guitars, bass), Tom Sanders (bass).

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Zru Vogue San Francisco, California

Avant-pop, art-funk, post-punk from the San Francisco Bay Area. Zru Vogue's first single "Nakweda Dream" (1981) is a dark-wave classic. Band members are Andrew Lawrence Jackson, Rick Cuevas, and Patrick Coyne.

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