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Coming down from the high of being connected to a higher source of awareness, the Prophet beings to preach to anyone who will listen. His primary mission is to convince those listening that they, like his prior pre-actualized self, are merely puppets dancing to a tune written long ago by people who do not have the best outcome of the species and the planet at heart. As anyone who studies history could predict, this does not go well for him and he ends up being captured by an ever-growing mob of low-brow reactionaries (manipulated from afar by a vague shadowy elite) whose intention is to lynch him as a lesson to freethinkers everywhere that their opinions are not actually desired and that they should probably just "shut up" and enjoy their slavery.

lyrics

SLOW DOWN

Look up from your duties and peer beyond the haze,
do you see the years that you've spent running the a maze?
Are you a bit part player on an empty stage,
attending to the ritual and pacing in your cage?

Look all around you now and tell me what you see:
millions of voiceless machines pretending they are free
whose every fleeting notion is written as in stone,
fleeing from the uncertain and fearing the unknown.

All eyes upon you as you waver on the edge.
All jaundiced observations as you stare down from the ledge.

So whose life are you living and by whose unspoken rules?
Why did you pass your future into the hands of fools
who trod down well-worn paths yet never found their way?
Why do their listless echoes inform your life today?

All eyes upon you as you waver on the edge.
All jaundiced observations as you stare down from the ledge.
And sudden gasps of shock as their eyes raise to the sky,
as you throw off your chains, spread your wings and fly!

An angry crowd has gathered, they're calling out my name,
a mob of naysayers who shoot down every claim.
Behind them stand all those who forged all their chains,
(keeping it all the same).

I back away to flee but there's nowhere to turn.
Smoke wafts in the breeze as my books start to burn.
All the words now just forgotten, mocked and spurned.
(The pattern always returns.)

And as I struggle, to a platform I am led,
with handcuffs on my wrists and a hood over my head.
I call for help but the fickle faithful have all fled
(they only value you when you're dead).

credits

from The Quiet Earth Orchestra, released February 19, 2008
John Ludi did it all...with the exception that an old Balkan folk tune found its way into the main riff via Michael Moore of Tin Scribble.

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John Ludi Madison, Wisconsin

John Ludi is a musician/singer-songwriter with a wide array of influences and lyrical interests who was "Indie" before the term even existed. Working outside of the music industry by choice has given Ludi the ability to release songs of a level of lyrical depth that are anathema to the minds of the "suits". Ludi lives off-grid in a yurt in the woods of WI and will "fight the power" til he dies. ... more

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