Mirror
- On Vacation 3:17
- Ants 3:24
- Mary 2:24
- Compromises 4:46
- What's It Like? 5:02
- Kamasutra 3:21
- Poetry 4:47
- I'm Alive 5:57
- Ghosts 2:03
- Fantasy 4:03
- A Private Matter 3:08
- A Pause 3:32
- Mirror 4:31
- Rough Copy 2:50
Total: 53:23
AUTHORS:
Jan Burian - texts, music, vocal, piano
Jan Amos - arrangements, stroje a nástroje
Dušan Soltys - designer
Petr Mayer - sound, mastering
Karzi - mix of songs Mirror and I'm Alive
Petra Pliskova - fotos, graphical processing
Derek Paton - english translations
Pavel Klusak - sleevenote
Publised by INDIES RECORDS, 2002.
Jan Burian (born in 1952) is a singer-songwriter, author and documentary filmmaker. His albums include Hodina duchů (The Witching Hour), Černý z nebe (Black from Heaven), Poesie (Poetry), Jenom zpívám (I'm Only Singing), and Unavený válečník (Weary Waltzer).
Jan Amos (born in 1976) has collaborated on the stage productions of Min Tanaka, Dogtroep (a Netherlands theatre company), Peter Schumann (the American director of Bread and Puppets), and is currently working on the Envoi project. He also composes music for film.
Sleevenote
It wasn't only the hero of the introductory song who went on vacation; it was, for all intents and purposes, all Czech songwriting in the 1990s. New songs almost never appeared, and the old ones continued on covertly or took breaks. Jan Burian linked up with poetry, looked for a form for musical translations of the verse of Benny Andersen (a Danish poet), and settled his private affairs with his own, earlier repertoire. Now, in the spring of 2002, he's releasing a new album full of his own lyrics. Does that suggest he was just passing the time, bridging over the new songwriting period for the public?
Like a kitchen full of ants, Burian's albums over the years have been full of the music he hears and feels as if it were always live. Zrcadlo is the inventory of that music: swing and cabaret piano reside together like quieter tenants, along with his own version of John Cale's kind of rock. In his music you can also sense a tendency towards emotion, towards being carried off by the melody, towards hits, and the courage to record a hit in the garage and get it a bit dirty (a healthier dirt than the stuff from the middle of the road). In Zrcadlo, Burian and the arranger Jan Amos declare their intoxication with the industrial sounds of the real world, the good and the bad. Apart from excursions "out", they also descend "in" to the microcosm of digital sounds and oscillators, to the hum and whirr of machines which, though recently invented, also possess a certain poetry. This, too, is one of the mirrors of Zrcadlo: the dialogue between instrument and machine, between good old barroom piano and the hubbub of the outside world, which, rather than standing in opposition, plays along with the piano. All this is done in the name of the song, the tried and tested form that has assailed us over the centuries with its invention, emotion and simplicity. "We pretend we're exploring new roads, but, in the end, always set out on the old." I mean also the mirror between Burian and Amos, the words and the music, the private and the public, the dream and reality, the journalist and the poet within Burian.
By the way, when randomly opening today's issue of Respekt, I happened upon the following: "A picture in a mirror can be a reflection of reality, but it needn't always be."
Pavel Klusak, February 25, 2002
I've finally got it:
God's on vacation
You can't be sure of anything anymore
But he's got the right -
says the Labour Code of the Universe
To go on vacation once and a while for a few thousand years
But it's too bad it happened
Just when we were here
It seems
we won't live to see the morning
when he returns
When he rattles his key in the lock
And enters, fresh, tanned and rejuvenated
He'll greet you: We'll I'm back!
And won't even say what it was like there
No time for that now - there's work to be done
I had no idea that without me
You'd have such a hard time getting by ...
He'll take off his coat and begin
To change things
To fulfil
To make things make sense
To soar upwards
To save lives
To show the way
To give succour
To reconcile
To give strength
In short, as they say,
To light the lamps in our souls ...
Him:
Like last year
The ants are coming
A special commando of spring
Dances through the kitchen
They hold out in the cupboard,
Pouring over a sticky jar
They pretend they're exploring new roads
But, in the end, always set out on the old
Like last year
I stand here over them
With rags and sprays
With nuclear physics behind my back
With my sponsors
(Newton,
Leonardo,
Coca-Cola)
And feel naked
While things happen in our kitchen,
Which we haven't had under control for 500 years
Them:
Like last year
We ants are heading out
A special commando of spring
We're rushing towards the sunlight
Through plains and fragrances
Through the quaintest cracks
We pretend we're exploring new roads
But, in the end, always set out on the old
Mary doesn't want anybody anymore
Just to survive on the edge of days
And not to dig too deep
Rest with both feet on the ground
And yet remain aloof
Mary doesn't want anybody anymore...
To get excited and aroused from the waist up
While swooning with bliss
To live life to the fullest - halfway
Mary doesn't want anybody anymore...
To play with numbers
To dabble with statistics
Not to think too much about the horrors on the news
To toy with tables
Calculate the average age as though it were her own
Mary doesn't want anybody anymore...
And now she hasn't even got herself ...
Now Hannah's in the same boat
She's firmly resolved
Not to make more
Compromises than she used to
She'll live alone in a little room
In a fortress of dreams behind the wailing wall
Now Martha's in the same boat
She can't fake it anymore
Now Denise is in the same boat
She'd offer to hold you
She feels so wrung out
Like a tube of shaving cream
They remember Sundays
When the angels used to come down
Muscular
Strong
Small
Chubby
Angels...
But these days the angels would probably only make her laugh
And no woman would give them a second thought
And anyway they'd just disappear again
And all that'd be left would be
clipped wings
What's it like
To have an opinion about everything?
To know and to determine
To run things responsibly
To be certain?
What's it like
To be an expert on ants
On politics
And what women want?
What's it like
To hang
With one leg in outer space
And to see yourself as flypaper
that wisdom's got stuck to?
What's it like
To know more than to think
To decide more than to doubt
To judge more than to regret
To be certain?
To understand the language of birds
Or at least to be able not to listen
When they begin to sing...
What's it like
Not to collect mysteries like mushrooms in the woods
Just sometimes to trip on a toadstool
To laugh about it
And with a penknife slowly scrape the last bits of soil
from your boots back into the pine needles?
All the men would like to teach her
How to do it
Miracles of the body
After all, she's the right age and shape for it
All the girls around her want to tell her
How to do it
Miracles of the body
After all, she's the right age and shape for it
But she makes love
In one position only:
With her hand on her heart
And head in the clouds ...
Miracles of the body ...
Everybody was asleep
And in the quiet all that was heard
was the faint tapping of a computer keyboard
A poem gradually appeared
on the screen before me
And then came the cat
I hadn't seen for thirty years
And under the table carefully made itself comfortable
at my feet...
And I'll live
As far and as high
As the eye can see
As the ear can hear
The imagination can run free
As long as memory never fades
And time allows
And I'll live
As high and as far
As the antennas reach
As long as the stars keep twinkling
And the blackest of black holes
Keeps gaping
And time allows
As far and as high
And not an inch,
Not an amoeba more -
Boundless limitation!
I'm alive ...
Just stop and close your eyes
Hold your breath and prick up your ears
Feel the throbbing and pounding in your temples
They're coming in unobserved - ghosts!
But without them the fury is a hundred times worse
Soon, in a moonlit landscape,
Thin emptiness grips me:
Where are you ghosts???
Be here with me, threaten and terrify!
Unsheathe your fires and rattle your brass!
Knead me in dough, and eat and eat -
Catch me by the wings -
Ghosts ...
When I close my eyes
Inside me there's a small
Factory hall
Assembly lines -
An assembly of lines
Efficient machines
And here:
The warehouse
And the lockers
A factory hall
Small
But my own
Look! My little nipple got stuck not far from your eye
You touch it - an alarm goes off in my body
And the hours begin to run off madly towards evening
towards tomorrow
towards death ...
But the ant in the grass pays us no mind
And not even the sun departs from its course
Let's try and keep quiet
Not to say a word
Not to answer
Not to utter
Let's NOT COM-MU-NI-CATE!
We know basically what we've got to do
We've got our tasks and our roles
In school we pass out books to the children
We can greet each other with subtle gestures
A smile says a lot - or doesn't
Let's try to keep quiet
To take the plugs of words out of our mouths
The plugs out of our ears
Spring clean our heads
wash the clichés out of the curtains
throw out the old slogans and buzzwords
shake out the worn-out definitions
Let's try to keep quiet
Anyway nobody can hold out for long
With cigarette smoke
some statement slips into the air
and it all begins again -
But a pause might do us some good...
Sometimes I tell myself:
Even the dim will get wise
The ugly beautiful
The petty will disappear
The greedy will lock themselves up in a safe
The spiteful will stifle
The gluttonous choke to death
The cruel cut themselves
The envious will turn green
The slanderous will lose their tongues
Liars they're faces
The self-confident their heads
The cool their composure
The cowardly their fear
And those who've lost their heads will find them
The suspicious will denounce themselves
And the domineering will begin to work for a good cause ...
But then I ask myself:
Why harbour such illusions?
Just look at yourself!
Everyday I gain experience
I now know how to talk to you without words
I've quit smoking
I don't argue
I've got rid of mistakes
Almost everybody forgives me
Now I too am against abortion
(After everything that happened)
Against the death penalty as well
And the slaughter of animals
(Oh, the metres of salami I used to tuck away!)
If I had one more life to live
I'd know what to do
I'd know how to live it ...