Live 4th May 2019, at Wairarapa TV May Music Marathon, in Masterton NZ.
Solo guitar & harmonica version of track http://www.fiffdimension.bandcamp.com/track/summer-skin
Originally recorded in Wellington NZ, September 2003, for the album ‘Loose Autumn Moans‘, with a mini string section of Mike Kingston on cello and Sam Prebble (RIP) on violin. It also appears on the Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005 compilation.
Loose Autumn Moans, like its predecessors The Marion Flow and Mantis Shaped and Worrying, tried to extend the boundaries of the singer/songwriter genre by incorporating influences from free-jazz and modernist poetry. The lack of a chorus in most songs was deliberate. The album was all recorded on analogue tape, with mostly acoustic instruments, and originally released on cassette. The ensemble tracks were recorded without overdubs and were all first or second takes.
Lyrics
Moaning cried goodbye for the room of false flowers in sickness
The light from the window a silver on red mass of tears
Just like a factory when you are a tree
Images bent, broken-backed men walking at a crawl
I’m not at all sad
I just cried through the fire
& my eye was once and forever trapped in patterns
Geometry freezing life into tapestry
The rope is cut, and down something falls
This is what the world needs, some nice place to while away the days
Dive into desktops & snorkel away
You’re a bullfighting matador, the perfect weapon
James Bond had you over for breakfast & I remember what you said to him:
‘this will not last, this will not last, there’ll always be room for them & suffering’
(‘take in poor children to feed’ say the 19th century boarding schools, but they secretly eat them)
Paris finds her mocking grace, anger shoulder to the nylon
Time finds her still alone in the car’s iron dance
Open ruptured sweetness, and the content was better than this dragon cloud clothing firm minded hand with wives & paper kings all better in crayon
Climbing ivy for the band, translucent stare, the body better than shiny
Shiny hair, faithful pet out in the sun borderline wine
Golden sweet beauty laying promises here in worth of our lives
Upon your feathers laughing, cold running hands sick with summer skin, the river is blushing
Almost a smile could freeze hello fondlings relate to so much light
No-one ever knows of the desert cold, a face that won’t accept me
Time will change except me, no room for suppositions when time is fine and lives in Paris
The second viola king in midnight orchestra symphonic form
Unbound persuasion lend us guilty of all that was said & all that was done in unending summer where none can be zero
& this is a word insufficient to capture the season
Ask for it all & it is soon to fall, a season pathetic once then & for all
The summer is captured, but not in these words
fiffdimension 
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