Part Of The Problem 8

This song came to me as a small piece of a larger world I'd created in my head while reading too many books at the same time. It's a terrible habit of mine. The title "Mechanical Lions" came from a story of the same name by Danilo Kis, who lived and died in what was then Yugoslavia.
I was reading his collection of stories, "A Tomb For Boris Davidovic", in a park on the Vltava River in Prague. Really, it was a great vacation, drinking beer in three foreign countries with my brother and reading books while riding in trains and living in hostels.
"Crime and Punishment" was also in the trip's backpack until I left it behind in Ireland somewhere. But the biographical details of Fyodor Dosteovesky are there in the first part of the song. His father was choked to death by mutinous soldiers and he was himself in prison awaiting death by a firing squad. The second verse was filled in by scenes I saw in Krakow. A statue of a dragon outside a castle was rigged to breath flame for tourists but what I noticed most was the homeless people in Poland. Everywhere I went, people looked Czech or looked Irish, but here on the streets, these people could have been Indians or from India, I didn't know. Dirt makes people the same color and hides their former identities.
The old men only appeared to me after I had crossed an ocean to get back home. In a color photograph I had taken looking one direction, there were two men walking towards me. In a black and white photograph, apparently taken a moment later with my other camera and facing the opposite direction, the men were now walking away from me. They had come towards me and passed while I fumbled with film advance levers and light meters. Anne Tkach, with whom I first shared the prints, identified the men in the pictures. I was taken aback. It made me think of all the other old ones that have passed while I fucked around not paying proper attention to their presence. So, this song has always been related to "Dead Trees" (see Part Of The Problem 7) in an indirect way. Perhaps the next thing is to figure out more pieces of the story from that alternate European world that existed in my head in those days.



MECHANICAL LIONS (lyrics by Tim Rakel)

father was murdered, they poured vodka down his throat
poured it down his throat until he gagged and choked
you get into this frenzy with that stern look on your face
line up the firing squad, send me to a better place
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge
they said go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own

there are dragons breathing fire outside the castle walls
there are dogs wearing muzzles in the park below
the gargoyles they look down from the holy church
and if that carpenter came back he'd get murdered again
and the homeless look like they're not from around here
like angels, one moment they just appear
and the prophets get met with mechanical lions
and old men are left wandering the streets
they'll tell you everything you wish to know
you just have to notice them there

it's a damn shame hearts are hidden never to be found
while material goods continue to abound
they say thugs do the bidding, commit murder and do time
the state says that thinking is the most dangerous crime
so go on shout your non-sense, that's fine with us
keep on shouting non-sense but make sure it's your own
two old men were walking across the ancient bridge
two old men were walking along the river's edge