First published in Great Britain in 1982

(c) Peter Hammill 1982

All lyrics printed by kind permission.  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

'The Black Hole' first appeared, translated into Dutch, in Ohr magazine, December 1980.

Published by Sofa Sound, P.O. Box 2, Westbury, Wiltshire.

Photograph Anton Corbijn

Typeset by Quadraset Ltd., Combe End, Radstock, Bath, Avon.

Printed by The Fairwood Press, Dilton Marsh, Westbury, Wiltshire.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LYRICS
'This Will Never Come Again'
        La Rossa
        Again
        Shingle Song
        Time Heals
        Alice (Letting Go)
        People You Were Going To
        Airport
        Ferret and Featherbird
        Birthday Special
        The Polaroid

'The Angry Ace'
        Cat's Eye/Yellow Fever (Running)
        When She Comes
        The Siren Song
        Chemical World
        Ship of Fools
        The Habit of the Broken Heart
        Golden Promises
        Nobody's Business
        Last Frame
        Not for Keith
        The Cut
        Time for a Change (Chris Judge Smith)
        A Motor-bike in Afrika
        Sci-Finance
        The Old School Tie
        Handicap and Equality
        Two or Three Spectres
        Pushing Thirty
        Nadir's Big Chance
        Trappings
        Energy Vampires
        Masks
        The Mousetrap (Caught In)
        Careering (Don't Ask Me)
        Meurglys III, The Songwriter's Guild
        Losing Faith in Words

'Ashen Hours'
        Fogwalking
        Pompeii
        Imperial Walls (Anon. VIIIth Century Saxon)
        The Institute of Health, Burning (Chris Judge Smith)
        Urban
        Open Your Eyes (The Locarno Song)
        Still in the Dark
        The Future Now
        Mediaevil
        Porton Down
        Mr. X (gets tense)
        The Jargon King
        Gog
        Magog (In Bromine Chambers)

'The Mirror's Secrets'
        In Slow Time
        Autumn
        Door
        Mirror Images
        The Undercover Man
        Faint-heart and the Sermon
        Palinurus (Castaway)
        The Comet, the Course, the Tail
        The Second Hand
        Tapeworm
        (No more) the Sub-mariner
        The Sphinx in the Face

'Lone Wolf'
        Crying Wolf
        Lost and Found
        My Favourite
        If I Could
        This Side of the Looking-glass
        (On Tuesdays She Used To Do) Yoga
        Been Alone So Long (Chris Judge Smith)
        My Room
        A Place to Survive

'The Spirit Survives'
        The Spirit
        Scorched Earth
        Arrow
        The Sleepwalkers
        Wondering
        Faculty X
        The Wave
        Flight
        Pilgrims
        Childlike Faith in Childhood's End
        Still Life
 
 

STORIES

     I. Adam's Conviction
    II. The Madonna
   III.  Balance: The Mine
   IV.  Waiting
    V. The Spider's Web
   VI.  Brasilia
  VII.  The Black Hole
 VIII. The Message
 

DISCOGRAPHY
ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF SONGS

This book has been 'finished' more times than I care to contemplate. Originally, it was intended to be a volume of short stories, which I had completed by early 1975; immediately after I had met my deadline the publishing company ceased to exist.  Meanwhile Van der Graaf Generator had reformed and for the ensuing three years my commitment to and the demands made by the life of the group were such that I had no time even to consider what was to happen to the work, still less to involve myself actively in its presentation.  Three years is a long time for stories to stay sealed in their folders: when, eventually, I came to examine them again, their shortcomings seemed to me to vastly outweight their positive aspects.  Some I discarded immediately, and the majority I substantially rewrote; afterwards, they returned to lie dormant on my desk once more, as I continued to write and record songs, and to tour.  Some time later, the same sifting, discarding and rewriting process took place again when I found I had the opportunity to devote myself to it.  Thus, in highly stripped-down form, the end product of the original 'Mirrors, Dreams, and Miracles' is the group of a half-a-dozen short stories which will be found in the second half of this book.

The title survives from 1975; in the intervening period, while the stories have shrunk in number and size, songs have proliferated. Over the years it became obvious to me that this book should take the same form as its predecessor, 'Killers, Angels, Refugees'; thus its bulk consists of the lyrics of all my recorded songs from 1974 to 1980.  Most of these words have already been printed on record sleeves or inserts, with the exception of the songs from 'Nadir's Big Chance'.  These are, of course, included here.

Once again I have tried to arrange the songs in groups which have cohesion in terms of subject matter rather than chronology or source. This procedure is inevitably somewhat arbitrary, and is intended, as
are the group headings, only to provide some kind of flow.  Songs are hard to 'collect': the very nature of the form, although allowing for a multiplicity of interpretations, insists that a successful song must be
finite, self-contained and self-supporting.  I have long held out for the idea that the 'popular song' is capable of sustaining far more in terms of content, subject and effort than it is generally supposed or required to, as I hope this collection shows; so it comes as no real surprise to me that the fruits of seven years' songwriting on diverse topics will not fit easily into any definite order.

I have to thank Chris Judge Smith for his permission to include the three songs of his which I have recorded in this period: 'Time for a Change', 'The Institute of Mental Health, Burning', and 'Been Alone So Long'.  If I could I would also thank the anonymous Anglo-Saxon who penned (but did not title) 'Imperial Walls'; since he wrote in the VIIIth century, I cannot, but I am still very glad to have found his words.

The discography which concludes the book covers the records on which the songs appeared, and is a direct continuation from that in 'Killers, Angels, Refugees'.  Many of these records have now been
deleted in the U.K., but I believe that all are still available--on different labels, and with different matrix numbers, of course--in one country or another abroad.  I'm afraid I have no further information than this on that score.

Finally, I find myself astonished to see all these songs and subjects grouped together.  Some call me a pessimist; for myself, I cannot see it as being pessimistic to believe in, to see, to chronicle the mirrors,
dreams and miracles with which I have been graced.  It is true that many of them lie just below the surface or just outside the frame of 'normal' life, but they are none the less real for that.  I still don't know
where they all come from...but here they are.

                                Peter Hammill
                                Wiltshire, 4/11/1981
 

* This is not the original cover (Esta não é a capa original)