THE WASTED SHIP

NOTE ON THE BAND NAME “OEDIPUS WRECKS”

My friend Dr. Calculator Ptom named the band upon hearing my songs. He used to say gnomic things like “the universe is a projection of the mind.” “The G note is green on the guitar fretboard.” “Born Slippy is evidence dance can have a soul.” “Poetry is untranslatable because of the music.” “Death is God.” “Early Oasis is good for bittersweet, comedown energy.” Once, we boarded a train not knowing where it was headed in the middle of the Night in London. By now he is Dr. Calculator Thomas and the song is ‘Born Slippery.’

THE OEDIPUS WRECKS GIG, CAMDEN TOWN, CIRCA 1997

I

THE GHOSTS LAMENT (THE GUZZLER MEN)

I'm the only one left, left to shoot my

own gun. This is the dead land. Crack a smile

and curse the sun. Death awaits to fuck me.

Give me bliss and give me kisses. Death a-

waits to save me. The ghosts lament, the ghosts

lament. Come on baaaaaaaaaby, you know it's e-

asy, don't say maaaaaaaaaybe, let's go crazy. Death

awaits to fuck me. Give me bliss and give

me kisses. Death awaits the same me. The

ghosts lament, the ghosts lament, no more ghosts.

||||.

[Note: when years later I discovered the James P D Tucker sheet where pictures grew, and the pictures seemed to depict the lyric to one of my old songs, this is the song.]

II

KILL

My eyes sting,

my teeth are bleeding raw,

too much thought

to make me sick.

Stinky clothes

and mouth become

my skin and all

these fruits I want to kill.

Give my hope,

surrender to the tide,

you can take

my remains;

but I must go,

to wash the poison

from my eyes,

before, before, before I kill.

III

SNAKE SNAKE BUTTERFLY

Snake snake butterfly, lay me dead & close my eyes.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

Give me your alibi; give me chains to stop me fly;

give me night to soothe my blinded eyes:

so I can see the secrets of the skies.

We must rise, freedom falling from our eyes,

unlock doors, it's a perfect time to die,

and it's okay ‘cause baby we'll go insane

but don't reach out too far for the flame.

Snake snake butterfly, lead me to the Other Side.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

IV

VITAL SIGNS

Smile like a smile just to smile,

cast to Heaven for a while...

let's rip holes in the boat,

throw the captain overboard,

throw the angels off the bridge,

death comes and stops me getting

bored of life's soul-machine.

What we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs.

Back to Hell to plunder wings,

let the ritual now begin,

come and ride the waiting beast,

ride it gone into the fire,

ride it to the waiting feast,

my baby's waiting to get higher,

to get higher, to get higher...

what we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs,

yeah feel alive with vital signs.

Come again there's much to do,

don't you know that I love you?

V

SECRETS IN THE MUD

This is the sound of getting totally fucked.

Of when you first get your notebook sucked.

Of changing gold into Glastonbury mud.

Of lying down in a field with your bud.

This is the music through whom we aspire.

This is the rule book that is thrown on the fire.

This is the jam where the trousers are down.

This is the wine-shop on the edge of town.

Chorus: Glastonbury, you should be free, and all you have in your big city,

you hit my G, you make me see how I want to see,

lights go down, lights come on,

and all my sadness seems to be gone,

although I still love to be what I dream I am.

[guitar solo]

VI

OCEANS SMILE

Oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain.

The tide goes out and leaves me

lost, the last thing a glass gene.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Death will come on silky wings

but I for one will not go.  

A soul is endless, oceans open

and keeeeeeeps a perfect O.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Go drink the ocean with your tea

cup, give your heart far out.

If oceans smile with liquid eyes

then they'll give you a shout.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Too drunkenly I sail the water

on Rimbaud’s smoking boat.

With whiskygills primed in fire

I sail the waves to Boot.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

(reconstructed)

VII

HEAVEN KNOWS

Heaven knows and walks away -

but what it knows it will not say.

It’s impossible to make a cowboy film in space?

Heaven knows and turns its face!

Heaven’s filled with silver eyes.

Heaven’s hills all harmonise.

I hear its angels when they call...

Heaven knows and lets them fall!

[reconstructed]

VIII

MURDER IS DEAD

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me yeah,

I wish that I had been there,

been there to saaaaaave Jesus,

I'm sure he meant to please us.

Murder is dead,

murder is dead,

murder is dead.

We're young and filled with semen,

we're going to break some hymen,

we'll make the cops turn in their badges,

we're going over all the edges yeah.

Murder is dead,

murder is dead,

murder is dead.

AFTERNOTE ON OEDIPUS WRECKS

I remember taking Latin GCSE (which was the pre-Millennial period in which these songs were written); and how sometimes we’d learn of Greek myths in among vocab tests and lessons on metrical feet. Although I haven’t read Sophocles or Euripedes fully, I gather from my research that the word ‘psyche’ comes from Ancient Greek for ghost, kopsiche, and that ghosts can travel in time, one scholar visiting Ancient Greece finding the Greeks were tremendous actors who wore long cloak, buskins and Native American Indian head-dress.

I also hear Every Planet Has Its Own Colour and ‘Calliope’ – Muse of Epic Poetry – means “beautiful face” in Ancient Greek – and these would be my “mangled hands” for plinking a piano up in the Alps.

Obvs I also know enough about the original Oedipus Wrecks story to know that Oedipus took out his eyes, which might be why the sheet where pictures grew depicts a lyric to an Oedipus Wrecks song – but I don’t know this.

To be honest, marking my brother’s page without hands was never my own Game, as you might be able to tell from the Oedipus Wrecks lyrics. I can tell you though that my brother made 2 sheets, not 1. The first (which came to be the marked sheet) was a Badly Drawn Boy lyric about the light, scrambled, deliberately imperfectly quoted, in a kind of word-sunflower shape… the words were something like

sunshine inside of you

old sun warm sun

spreads over you

soliel all over you.

The other was the new da Vinci circle which I’d describe as a discrete system meant to contain the international language alphabet in 4 Points of Difference, namely:

@

<BEE> [long squiggle]

Infinity Symbol

The latter would not only suggest <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet but by incorporating a long squiggle, would surely escape every word in every order.

At the time I first read the 2 doodles, which were left to rot in our den in the barn here at Cumpstones, I read the first one as described, but the other appeared as a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes – which I presumed was how it was writ, also permanently available to the perceptive faculties. However, at a further view, some time later, the tabular box comprised of many boxes had reverted to being the <BEE> doodle.

At a further visit to the 2 pages from that, the first doodle was by now marked with pictures. As stated the pictures that grew seem to resemble or dissimulate the lyric to a piece I wrote way back, circa 1997, from the set list of a cool outfit called Oedipus Wrecks. So I thought it would be proper procedure to show the lyrics after the sheet, also delimit my brother’s part, as I am. It strikes me that the result – i.e. a piece called ‘The Wasted Ship’ – is rather good – that it could foreshadow the end of the chip – also that I should’ve started my literary career with the Oedipus Wrecks lyrics in paperback too.

It is still not clear who drew the shapes – whether it was my old mates who saw the band playing live in London pubs – or whether it was <BEE> that left a mark – or otherwise. Still I am told to believe that in ‘The Wasted Ship’ I have contributed a work of genius, even if I don’t understand it yet. As I say to exhibit the work online like I am would probably be what a great scientist would also do; but being remembered as a great scientist is not my motivation. I am told that my part in it was being a musical genius and that ‘The Wasted Ship’ as displayed online proves it.

At the time I was writing those songs I was reading Jim Morrison’s binary-machine; Arthur Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels; Keats’s Letters; Gray’s precursor to Romanticism in a graveyard; the place where Modern poetry began in TS Eliot; Blake’s aphorisms; Kerouack and Ginsberg with the last poet’s last poem; Ted Hughes (who was Laureate at the time); and more. I am very well read by now and still don’t know who drew the pictures!

My friends from the audience back at the time don’t like the subsequent work as much. I heard it said that the Oedipus Wrecks material “widened the road,” “broadened the horizons” and “enlarged the sky,” for the most academic audience there is back in the day. Still, being satisfied with only an 8-song-long set-list by someone that hasn’t lost their virginity yet is hard. I moved schools for Sixth Form, saying goodbye to Oedipus Wrecks (or so I thought). By now, there are some very bright people who to this day, 2025, all these years later, still believe the Oedipus Wrecks gig is all I should keep from 1000’s of files!