Taking advantage of being out of London for the festive season, I thought I would knock up a little video for a new(ish) track that will be featuring on my second album sometime in 2014. With the adept assistance of my sister Jennie, I took a stroll out to a tiny woodland chapel in the Kent countryside to record an atmospheric live take which is why the vocals are pretty raggedy. The song itself had a cluster of inspirations (including Matthew Arnold, Bill Shakespeare, Saint Augustine and John the Baptist) but foremost a quotation from John Maynard Keynes that got me thinking about the dogmatic certainty of our prevailing economic orthodoxy. I make no claim to be well versed in theories of economics, but am nonetheless intrigued by the power of fiscal hegemony and its ability to so strongly dictate the Western economies of the 21st Century. The song is pretty much a lament for the absence of such a powerful dissenting voice as JMK’s in today’s world. When it comes to combating the glorious follies that forge our idolatrous calves, the compassionate wisdom and shrewd intelligence of Mr. Keynes is much missed.
“When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease … But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.”
“The Future”, Essays in Persuasion (1931) Ch. 5, JMK, CW, IX, pp.329 – 331, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
Lyrics
Far beyond this darkling plain lurk new myths of limitless gain,
Abandoned lands of milk and honey cede to fiscal reign.
We bow to derivative calves forged in oil-fuelled furnaces,
Graphs of bovine gold keep growing, gorging slowly on our swollen GDP,
Our credit histories, these toxic equities,
Sponsoring prime-time tragedy.
Splendid shards of glass and steel pierce these skies with monochrome fealty,
‘Beauty so old and so new’ accrues the tarnished hue of greed,
So we serve the corporate need, blessing bonds with quantitative ease,
These hedged inequities keep growing, gorging on our swollen GDP,
Our credit histories, these toxic equities,
Sponsoring prime-time tragedy.
JM Keynes where are you now?
JM Keynes where are you now?
In the wilderness with your locusts and honey, Jonny where are you?
Oh Jonny Keynes, how we need you now.
Because we are the dying breed, caught between the Sound and the Fury,
Numinous insolvency casts us into mammon’s tawdry schemes,
We strut, we fret and we rage as we sell out our hour upon this stage,
Worshipping new days of trade, desperate for the memories to fade,
Of our hope and our dreams, our tragic histories,
Our decaying philosophies,
Oh we’re trying to buy back our dignity.
JM Keynes where are you now?
JM Keynes where are you now?
In the wilderness with your locusts and honey, Jonny where are you?
Oh Jonny Keynes, how we need you now.
A voice in the wilderness.
How we need you now.