“…To find the fundamental truths
It was going to take some time
Thirty five summers down the line
The wisdom of each passing year
Seems to serve only to confuse
Seems to serve only to confuse….”

© Hogarth/Rothery/Kelly/Trewavas/Moseley from the album “This Strange Engine”, 1997

Three for three. Next up is this one, nominally known at the moment of Lives Of Glass, the title coming from one of the lines buried deep in the song’s soft underbelly. Now these lines arent particularly old and have been ones that I’ve happened across in the last few months. But come one, come all, they all have a place, no matter how they have been acquired, LOLZ.

Again, its autobiographical. It reflects on the concept that everything around you and everything you do and every memory, every interaction you have is fragile, transparent on the surface, not to mention precious and easily broken… but in the same breath, if you tiptoe around life and act scared of it, you’re going to spend more time not doing anything, not getting the joy out of life for fear of something going wrong and ruining it all. Its ok not to know something. Its ok to find the joy in learning something for the first time. It is, after all, all about the journey and not the destination. The destination is the same for all of us no matter what stations our life’s trains call at on the way. The terminus is NoOne Gets Out Of Here Alive. And we all get there sooner or later than each other, depending on what the universe has mapped out for us along the way.

So, thats what its all about. The last lines are inspired by and taken from Rick Rubin, particularly that we all are in and imagine in different worlds to each other; right now, this very minute, is my time for my life and no one can take that away; as the line says, its my moment for me to feel alive in my own way. Im looking forward to reading Rubin’s book over the coming months. Like him, I am a non-engineering Producer and for the most part a non-playing musician (at the moment anyway), but there is still a valuable part to be played by those who trust their ears and who bleed music if you cut them open and thats maybe one thing that Rubin and I have in common, in our very different worlds. I find his philosophy fascinating and am looking forward to learning more about him.

And finally, the last lesson being: stop expecting the life you think you deserve; go out there and make it happen while you still can. No one else is going to make it happen for you.

There is no music as yet, although something is telling me that its likely to be quite proggy and probably have distinctly different elements and themes. That though is nothing more than idle Sunday Night Speculation, it will go in whatever direction it is meant to go in and I will follow it.

Lives Of Glass

I could be a butterfly in your pocket,
Going everywhere with you where you go
You keep on waiting for the glow, the glow that never comes
We saw it once, but it never came back,
I guess I’m the keeper of your lost cause.

We all want to live in a better world than we do
Dont just smile to pass the time of day
You spend all your time furiously scrubbing
Scrubbing at a stain thats never going to go away
Just one more river
And just one more wall
Another obstacle, that is going to stop nothing at all

Sometime it felt like our lives were made of glass
Every train was the start of an adventure
But no more walking on needles and pins
How much our modern lives have changed!
We’re looking at the lights, drowning out the night
Something about it all, it just isnt right…

There is an innocence in learning
And a beauty in growing
And a naivety and a joy in not knowing
Dont try and fill something in your life that can never be filled
Or let your worry about life’s one way journey ever make you ill
Everyone wants a piece of you when you do it right
And most of them dont know or care who you are
As long as you put up a fight

We all imagine such different worlds
in my other world, maybe it would be melancholy, maybe it would be pearls
This is my time for no one else to take away,
The one moment to feel so alive but only in my own way
Stop expecting the life you think you deserve
You cant put something else ahead of your life and just call it love…

© Lyrics Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025