Songs of Farewell

It started out, innocently enough, as a challenge.

I was on holiday with a (very) old friend. We were touring Tuscany, taking in the
sights and sites, and generally displaying our ignorance of art. Andy must have felt
I would get bored, so he set me some homework – to write a topical parody of
Dylan’s ‘The Times are a-Changing’.

This was not a song I particularly liked. Nor did it immediately inspire me to
travesty. So I chose instead my all-time favourite protest song, Barry McGuire’s
‘Eve of Destruction’.

By the time I‘d worked that one out of my system, we were in Florence. And I was
getting bored, or at least surfeited on Renaissance art and architecture. So I tried
my hand at the Dylan as well to express my longing for the Gothic.

So here you are. The songs don’t have much to do with Sweden, except to the
extent that my adopted home, despite its wide open spaces, makes its own
particular contribution to the general rape of Nature that is going on world-wide.
Indeed the wide open spaces often take the form of kalhygge, technically known
as ‘deforestation’. In reality this is the arboreal equivalent of strip mining.

According to Sweden’s forestry industry sector, the ‘harvesting’ of wood ‘balances
production and environmental objectives’. But in order for this harvesting to
ensure a quick turnover, quick-growing conifers are favoured over any other kind
of tree, resulting in green deserts of monoculture. Similarly, the use of huge
wood-harvesting machinery results in wholesale depredation of forest areas,
obliterates the landscapes, devastates the local flora and fauna, and pollutes the
groundwater by unearthing poisonous heavy metals.

But never mind.

This approach allows the government to claim that Sweden is a world-leader in
sustainable forestry, while at the same time generating economic growth.
Needless to say, it does very little for other kinds of growth.
So join the club everyone and sing along while we hurtle like lemmings to our
destruction. Though unlike the mythical lemmings, we seemed to be determined
to drag the whole of the natural world down with us.

And if you can’t sing, then I suggest you clap with one hand instead.

Eve of Extinction

The human world, it’s going under.
The way we live, it’s no great wonder.
The forests of the earth laid bare by plunder,
Ravaged by fires from lightning and from thunder,
Our covenant with Nature just rent asunder,
Our bids to put things right, just one big blunder.
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of extinction.

Don’t you understand, what I’m trying to say?
And can’t you feel the fears I’m feeling today?
Once a species has gone, it ain’t coming back.
And if it’s you that’s extinct, you’ll not notice the fact.
Take a look around you, boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of extinction.

Yeah, the air’s so foul, feels like we’re suffocatin’.
The water’s bad, feels like we’re dehydratin’.
The soil’s so poor, we’re dyin’ of starvation.
The sun’s so hot, we’re burnt with radiation.
We stuff ourselves with poison that we call medication,
And flush it down the drains to poison all creation.
We’re masters of the earth and masters of pollution,
And then we have the nerve to call it evolution.
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of extinction.

Think of all the plastic floating on the ocean.
And all the fishes in it, dying in slow motion.
You can bury your trash, and call it cost-accountin’,
But your trash will bury you in a real garbage mountain.
You can try to escape for four days in space.
But when you return, there’ll be no human race.
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of extinction.

Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of extinction.

The climes they are a-changing