IDEAL DISTANCE Music VIDEO

 Three Triptychs

Triptych I:

The Selfling

Left Panel (Track 1):

Ashen

The moon swings low across the valley

An immense celestial mirror

Shadows trace the breach between us

Etched amongst my ashen tears

Resolve or remove

Resolve or remove

Oftentimes my faith was challenged

I turned to shun God’s righteous war

Called upon to slay some dragon

Or fall upon my own sword

I tread the ash of broken angels

Denying all I’m meant to feel

Could I have caused this desolation?

Have I retained the right to heal?

Resolve or remove

Resolve or remove

Center Panel (Track 2):

Prince in Exile

Do not indulge him when he acts like a child 

I swear that he thinks he’s some kind of prince in exile 

Vampiric profligate and spewer of bile

High priest to the unclean beast and chief of dead smiles

Mom thinks he hung the moon

To daddy he’s a herald of doom

I think the kid needs to clean his room

With a real powerful vacuum

Do not indulge him when he acts like a child

I swear that he thinks he’s some sort of 

butch Oscar Wilde 

More like a dick with fists and no sense of style

Toy kings have been forged from less I guess, and meanwhile…

Some think he hung the moon

To others, he’s a herald of doom

I think we’d all love to fill the room

With our own personal vacuum

Piscine angels, sleek and lean

Mesmerise via symmetries

That lure one through foul hatcheries

And down flooded stairwells…

What can bloom?

Nothing can bloom

When all the air has been sucked out of the room

And what gossoon,

What picayune

Emerges king from such a mess of a cocoon?

Legions of cruel cartoons

Are threatening to completely consume

All that they owe their existence to

I think we’d all do well to clean our rooms

With a good and sturdy vacuum

Right Panel (Track 3):

The Serpent’s Egg

I’ve seen Hell man

It’s very much a real place

Scratch the surface and you’ll be there

It’s just a molecule away

Suck the flame into your lungs man

Melt that smile off your face

Leave the righteous kind behind love

Take a schizophrenic break

Shake the nightmare awake

All the torture you can take

Scratch the surface and you’ll be there

Or keep the faith for Heaven’s sake

I’ve crawled my way through the cracks man

Slithered out the serpent’s egg

Crack the surface and you’ll see there

Out of time and out of place

See the squalor and the slime love

Feel the fever and the waste

I saw Heaven high supreme man

Then it was gone without a trace

Like a slap in the face 

From which I’m dying to awake

Scratch the surface and you’ll be there

Or keep the faith for Heaven’s sake

If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee

Beaten for being old before thy time

Thou shouldst not have been old

Till thou hadst been wise

O, let me not be mad,

not mad, sweet heaven!

I would not be mad

Keep me in temper

I would not be mad

I’ve seen Hell man

Looked the devil in his face

Might as well have been a mirror there

It was then I knew I’d cracked the case

One mistake and you can be there

Make it two and you can stay

Make it three and call it home love

It’s just the slimmest sin away

All the torture you can take

It’s I n the choices that you make

Scratch the surface and you’ll be there

Or keep the faith for Heaven’s sake

Keep the sacrifice in mind love

Put the devil in his place

Scratch the surface you will be there

Or keep the faith for Heaven’s sake

Keep the faith

Keep the faith

Keep the faith

Triptych II:

The Book of Samuel

Left Panel (Track 4):

Wax Dim

“Here am I. Thou calledst me once more?”

“I did not call thee. Lie down again my boy.”

And yet it really is quite strange

Twice he heard me call his name

He’s a funny one…

And yet it’s difficult to say

No way

There must be some mistake

But who’s to say?

Our Lord’s ways are truly quite mysterious

“Here am I. Thou calledst me wherefore?”

“This call comes not from me, but from Elohim our Lord”

Go and lie thee down again

And when you hear him call thy name

Answer reverently

“Speak my Lord, thy servant hears

With open ears”

Go forth and have no fear

I’ll be right here

Samuel, dear,

I could not be more proud of you…

Often since the loss of my sight

I’ve had these awful visions at night

A broken neck

My sons in a heap

The ark in the hands of vile Philistines

I’ve been a fine priest

I’ve broken no laws

My sons may be sinners

We all have our flaws

But this silent treatment’s brought me such pain

I’ve been denied again and again

And now he speaks to Samuel, this boy

Whom I’ve taken under my wing and employ 

And now I sit in darkness and wait

And dread the revelation of my

Fate

Tell me Samuel, what’s the news?

What was it that he told to you?

Tell me everything

Will what the prophet said come true?

Am I doomed

To die in disrepute?

I am subdued

Our Lord’s truth

Is all that we must answer to…

Center Panel (Track 5):

Psalm 515

I was born so large

I split my mother in two

A helpless victim

Of the damage I do

I don’t do art

I only sing when I’m boozed

I’m so rapacious 

Ate my twin out the womb

The only sheep I tend to

Tend to make tender meat

I tend to them well

When they get stuck in my teeth

Send me a champion

And the next meal I eat

I can pick them clean

With the bones of his feet

Bring it on on on on on on on on on on

I will cut you down down down down

End of psalm psalm psalm psalm psalm psalm 

Well now who is this?

I gotta tell you, I’m not impressed

It makes no difference to me

Listen, if you want to sacrifice this runt 

And his cute little sling 

No biggie

I’ll hack him up

Willy nilly, keep on racking em up

I stack bodies

See the armor man, it’s built tough 

Heavy weaponry to top it off

It’s no hobby 

I’m a killing machine

They tell me papa was a Nephilim

Keep it surgical my cuts are clean

Post extraction’s when I eat the spleen

Bloody muzzle got me lookin mean

Make a scene

Bring it on on on on on on on on on on

I will cut him down down down down

And it won’t take long long long long long long

As if in slow motion

A sucking implosion

A moment gone frozen

But I drew his own sword sword sword sword sword sword sword sword sword

I cut off his head head head head

And removed reproach from the children of Israel 

Right Panel 2 (Track 6):

The Servant and The Sorceress

He’s asked to see the witch of Endor

The very king who had all witchcraft banned

A kingship led by heathens

Is like a tower of sand

Let’s keep this clandestine

It could get out of hand

Would Adonai refuse to hear him?

Deny His own anointed king?

Saul’s terror at Gilboa painted an ugly scene

And now this medium…

I dread what this could mean

If God’s gone silent toward King Saul

Would He then deny us all?

If I had the clout to advise a king

I’d tell Old Saul to keep the faith lest he be tempted by

Ungodly things, demonic means and paths that lead to madness

But who am I to prophesy?

We must to the enchantress

“You are aware familiar spirits

Have been proscribed throughout the land?

You seek to entrap me

I must adhere to Saul’s command”

This man swore by Adonai

His gold then filled my hand

What happened next defied believing

I knew the grift had gone too far

I watched as a prophet

Arose like the morning star

It was as real as anything

And it nearly stopped my heart

Allow me now to set the scene

Before the spirit knelt the king

To whom he spoke the king was blind 

But he did hear the voice and know rebuke in every line of prophesy

He knew that he’d received his final warning

“Tomorrow you will be with me

All Israel in mourning.”

There then arose a song of David

A sweet remembrance for a fallen king

He tuned his psaltery

And began to sing…

“Thy glory O Israel

Is slain upon thy high places

How are the mighty fallen”

Triptych III:

The Pagan, the Cynic, and the Saint

Left Panel 3 (Track 7):

Lear’s Last Waltz

I’ve been generating pain

From some source I can not name

All the amenities were mine

The temperature was fine

Yet I trod the road to ruin all the same

Some goes out and some goes in

Either way I nothing win

The sharp sting of shame comes quick to prise

Fresh tears from ancient eyes

Doing naught to quench the fires of my sin

Some seem to love me all the same

Some like they’d rather see me hanged 

I’ll tell you life seems mighty strange

Once you’ve willed yourself deranged

I know I kicked you to the curb

But darling darn it 

I’ll do everything I can

To rejuvenate your faith in my command  

We both know what we’ve got

Is all kinds of tragic

And though thy truth hath made me mad

It’s the finest gift this old fool has ever had 

I’d trade my kingdom and my name 

Forfeit my fortune and my train

To have you near me once again

It was a mistake to cast you out

Oh Cordelia

Cordelia

Cordelia…

Every obstacle I own

They litter all directions home

They were positioned thus by me

Yeah the installation’s free

But the payment due is merely postponed

Is it ordained or is it chance

Or a demoniac trance

That’s got me doing things I’d never condone

Some seem to love me all the same

Some like they’d rather see me hanged 

I’ll tell you life seems mighty strange

Once you’ve willed yourself deranged

I know I kicked you to the curb

But darling darn it 

I’ll do everything I can

To rejuvenate your faith in my command  

We both know what we’ve got

Is all kinds of tragic

And though thy truth hath made me mad

It’s the finest gift this old fool has ever had 

I know I kicked you to the curb…

Center Panel (Track 8):

Passacaglia Crumb

The day Bobby Driscoll

Died in a flop house

I retired 

I took it from Skutch

I took it from the old man

On the chin

Mother and I 

Have reached a kind of detente

Stagnatees 

The paperback blues

The tranquilizer tension

Who needs teeth?

Family is strange

I took all the beatings

Robert thrived

We needed supplies

And somebody to tend them

Max obliged

I’ve held all this sludge

For 50 years inside me 

Bitter waste

It’s all up to me to handle its disposal

Underground

As I exit the stage

I’ll leave you with a few words

From the heart 

How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure

Right Panel (Track 9):

La Siciliana di Paolo Secondo Luca

Saul was a man of great sense

Born with a knack for Torah law

A brilliant mind

He commanded respect 

Wielding his wisdom and zeal

Till Christ saw revealed through such veils

His beacon to men, my friend Paul

Paul would admit he made mistakes

Stubborn as any Pharisee 

He saw Stephen stoned

And vowed to lay waste to our fledgling Church

But when a heavenly light struck him down

He heeded the call

Though villainous Rome would have Paul’s name erased

God from his throne will see him crowned a saint

Who would have thought a man of Saul’s fame

For breathing threats and disdain

Against us and Christ’s very name

Could have his heart and soul remade

On the road to Damascus?

There the King of Kings rebuked young Saul

And plunged him into darkness for three days

Till Ananias helped our Lord

Pour out the Holy Spirit

Into Saul

And the dark 

Fell like scales 

From his eyes

He bore his words like a flame

And saw the Gospel proclaimed

Gathering souls to its light

And through the secular night

Struggled to shepherd us on

Toward the Kingdom of the dawn

Saint Paul has survived

For his words are alive

I’m comforted knowing that Paul made it home

Bathed in the glory of God on His throne

Comforted knowing that Paul made it home

Bathed in the glory of God on His throne

Here in the midst of madness

Christians aren’t safe in Nero’s Rome

Yet, just like Paul,

I’d sacrifice all

In spite of the evil that’s done

And what tyrants may come

The war in Heaven is won

My faith is secure 

Though villainous Rome would have Paul’s name erased

Our church will ensure that his legend’s embraced

And she, by the blood of her martyrs must grow

As we, by our acts of great faith, make it so