[v1] Over the edge, the old dogma runs. It looks down… and falls.
Palace towers crumble in the face of everyday life.
A fragment of Myth makes a feeble shackle, but the ruins are scattered all over.
These days, countless little “isms” keep you in line. [v2] We’re subdued, now, with burning issues and elevator rock,
Polite brutality…, the latest causes, sexy cars and TV.
Ten thousand pinpricks kill as surely as a couple of blows with a club.
So what’s the use? …Trading one lie for another. [v1] Below the surface, something never seems to fit;
Roaming the streets — ready to spring.
It confronts you when you try to hide yourself;
It touches your elbow, catches your eye — and the dialog begins. [v2] Yet those who talk of “revolution,” and forget daily life,
Who ignore my dreams to live beyond survival,
Who don’t see how love is subversive, or refusing constraints is positive;
…Such people — they have a corpse in their mouth. [cho] But there’s an energy locked up in everyday life.
Yes, there’s an energy still locked in daily life.
— - — [v1] “Others are happy… Is it all just me?”
Ah, to try to adapt — that’s a no-win game.
In the ebb and flow of a crowd, the pointless retreats and attacks,
Deadly gestures and glances tangle and ricochet. [v2] People touch without meeting — isolation mounts;
Emptiness overcomes me as the crowd grows more dense.
The crowd drags me out of myself, installing thousands of
Little sacrifices in my empty presence. [v1] In a gloomy bar where everyone’s bored to death,
A drunken young man breaks a bottle against the wall.
He cries out across a void, but no one raises an eye;
He’ll try again, but his voice must ring loud… and clear. [v2] Love’s songs are crippled by the fear
That we’ll finish up alone as before.
The boat of love breaks up on the reefs of daily life.
We’ll smash that old world, before it wrecks our desire! [cho] Yes, there’s an energy locked up in everyday life.
Oh, there’s an energy still locked in daily life.
— - — [v1] All those dead, mechanized, specialized actions
Steal a bit of my life a thousand times a day.
The tears and cries of childhood stay locked up in our hearts.
For ever? …Oh, so you feel it, too… [v2] We have no true bond, unless it’s based
On my will, with yours, to live for our own desires.
To be on the side of delight — and real festivity,
Can hardly be distinguished anymore from rebellion. [v1] But what spark of humanity, of a possible creativity,
Can remain alive when I’m dragged out of sleep every day,
Scrambled about in traffic, deafened by machinery,
Then tossed out in the streets, where the crowd comes together in boredom? [v2] They buy out our strength, twisting time into money,
As we work for all the junk they need us to consume.
But what do I want with a world set up in terms of profit?
I demand to live and play. I refuse to be used anymore! [cho] And there’s an energy locked up in everyday life.
Yeah, there’s an energy still locked in daily life.
— - — [v2] After the experts unveiled plans for a “better life,”
We stopped believing suffering could last forever.
So when they only offer new sedatives, or shrug it off as “just the way it goes,”
All that crap is weaker, now, than the hope they first inspired. *[v1] To justify submission, we’re told “work makes us free;”
From Henry Ford to Mao, they teach the duty to produce.
But all that our sacrifice serves — is the power held over us,
By managers, priests, …or even “radical leaders.” *[v2] Up till now, tyranny has merely changed hands;
The Left and Right carry on their lovers’ quarrel…
While Power, kept safely out of reach, tries to smother any ideas of our own,
By staging contrived debates, with many little sides to take. *[v1] Oh, there’s a hundred different ways of supporting the side of Power,
But its deepening cracks will yield to our only way out.
There’s an energy locked up in daily life — that can move mountains,
We’ve only just joined the great game, where the stake is freedom. *[coda] There’s an energy locked up in daily life — that can move mountains,
We’ve only just joined the great game, where the stake is freedom.
We’ve only just joined that great gamble, whose stake… is freedom! |
