Black Ops Arcane
Thoughts Without Soul
Thoughts Without Soul took a lot of work. Things looked bleak for a while, but perseverance pays. This album continues a creative journey, on into some new territory.
The following poem, Thoughts Without Soul, is read in two parts on two tracks. These are Souls in Absentia and Desert Wind. These two tracks have some amelodic or barely-melodic parts and are programmatic, attempting to depict in musical language, arid, desolate places inhabited only worthless, soulless ones and the anger we direct at hollow, hypocritical men.
The poem was written by the artist in about 10 minutes, followed by roughly 15 minutes' editing at various times. This was after many years' rumination on TS Eliot's The Hollow Men. It was literally possible for the words to flow straight out, articulating some well developed inner notions.
Thoughts without soul
Eyes without sight
Men of honour absent
The natives of a dry expanse
Knowing only as one
To whom nothing is known
These are the has-beens
These are the dead-within.
A homestead built on dreams
Dreams of Death Valley
In night-time awakenings
Quench the thirst with sand
Sing the serenade
Sing to hollow trees
Sing to solid stone
And silence – a friend.
This is the rock-land
A land of sheep
This is the grave-land
Where fools stumble about
The cowards stand
They make no point
And scarecrows flap
shirts in stinking breeze.
“It is I,” says the buzzard
“I have come to point you home"
So slight the response
So pathetic are the men
Whose souls have no thought
With hearts of charcoal
And brains of chalk
“We have our home,” comes the reply.
