Home Sweet Homeostasis
See its first ever performance at: https://youtu.be/k21TLzKz3Ms?t=1662 (or below)
If you wanna balance a stick vertically on your hand
Have the heavy end up, watch the top and don’t stop, whatever you do
If you just stay still, it’ll fall off, but if you move too much, it’ll fall off too
It’s like playing in time or playing in tune
The umpteen zillion subtle little readjustments that you have to keep doin’
’Cos there’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Health and happiness hang in the balance
Between extremes of our needs and talents
Tangle and re-angle, ambitions and visions
Dancing on a slack line, a string of decisions
A vast variety of vacillating variables
It’s fascinating, it’d need a veritable
Surfeit of Riemann surfaces to convey
The complex polar pairs of ideals at play
Making our ethics flex every second of the day
Here are several to get us on our way
Comfort and adventure
Comedy and drama
Conversation, contemplation
Excitement and calm
Opportunity, security
Simplicity, complexity
Introvert, extrovert
Yin and yang
Broad-minded and focused
Rational and imaginative
Frugal and extravagant
Freedom and commitment
Faith and questioning
Change and repetition
Planned and spontaneous
Bull and bear
Sustainable economy, ecology, body and mind find physiology, farming and finance are kind of aligned to remind us
Nothing can rise forever
Everything in moderation, including moderation, expectation, excavation, population, polarisation, inflation, despite innovation
Nothing can rise forever
MC Escher, Mister Risset and Shepard prove the conclusion, perpetual growth’s an illusion
Seeking it only leads to disillusion
Nothing can rise forever
If your only aim is fame or fortune, fulfilment means always needing more soon
Keep your feet down to earth as you reach for the moon
Nothing can rise forever
Someday, the helium boom will bust, empty pockets in our earthly crust
We must adjust before such resources bite the dust
Nothing can rise forever
Insuring leveraged option shares in a crypto casino, a meta-bet-punt-gamble-wager-lottery-keno
We do it even though we know
Nothing can rise forever
Widening divide of rich and poor, our weakest link is our highest score
Through the debt ceiling we soar, praying in vain for trickle-down downpour
Nothing can rise forever
Looking for hope to cope with this upward slope, make sense of this endless ascending
Cceaseless increasing, upshifting, lifting, building, filling, this top-up's got to stop
Time to get down, here comes the drop
Drowning in depths of digital din, fads and fashion, ads and admin
But woah, change is in the wind, winding down this over-wound wounded world
’Til we value efficient, fixable things, built to last from stuff that’s renewable from not too far
Then recyclable too in our low-waste home sweet homeostasis
By living seasonally and locally, find your base, choose the path and pace that puts a smile on your face
And whatever you do, do it well and truly, and kindly, you’ll find there’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Health and happiness hang in the balance
There’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Making our ethics flex every second of the day
Gimme strength as we step into the fray
© Mal Webb 2020
When I was made aware of the Risset rhythm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Risset , I made a four bar beatbox version of it, combined it with the harmonic series the process implies and added Shepard Tones brass lines (to accentuate the endless rise): https://youtu.be/2otKFo79Je0 . I decided to use it as an excuse to write a song about the illusion of perpetual growth and Homeostasis (which I've taken great liberties with the meaning of!) I also incorporated the reverse of the rhythm part with guitar (later in the above video), which makes a nice soundtrack to energy descent and depleting finite resources.
Here's Ky and I performing it live for the first time ever!
As nature's cycles' wobbly wheels wane and wax like a dance of eleven left legs around riffs that roll like eggs, ebb and flow in home sweet homeostasis
See its first ever performance at: https://youtu.be/k21TLzKz3Ms?t=1662 (or below)
If you wanna balance a stick vertically on your hand
Have the heavy end up, watch the top and don’t stop, whatever you do
If you just stay still, it’ll fall off, but if you move too much, it’ll fall off too
It’s like playing in time or playing in tune
The umpteen zillion subtle little readjustments that you have to keep doin’
’Cos there’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Health and happiness hang in the balance
Between extremes of our needs and talents
Tangle and re-angle, ambitions and visions
Dancing on a slack line, a string of decisions
A vast variety of vacillating variables
It’s fascinating, it’d need a veritable
Surfeit of Riemann surfaces to convey
The complex polar pairs of ideals at play
Making our ethics flex every second of the day
Here are several to get us on our way
Comfort and adventure
Comedy and drama
Conversation, contemplation
Excitement and calm
Opportunity, security
Simplicity, complexity
Introvert, extrovert
Yin and yang
Broad-minded and focused
Rational and imaginative
Frugal and extravagant
Freedom and commitment
Faith and questioning
Change and repetition
Planned and spontaneous
Bull and bear
Sustainable economy, ecology, body and mind find physiology, farming and finance are kind of aligned to remind us
Nothing can rise forever
Everything in moderation, including moderation, expectation, excavation, population, polarisation, inflation, despite innovation
Nothing can rise forever
MC Escher, Mister Risset and Shepard prove the conclusion, perpetual growth’s an illusion
Seeking it only leads to disillusion
Nothing can rise forever
If your only aim is fame or fortune, fulfilment means always needing more soon
Keep your feet down to earth as you reach for the moon
Nothing can rise forever
Someday, the helium boom will bust, empty pockets in our earthly crust
We must adjust before such resources bite the dust
Nothing can rise forever
Insuring leveraged option shares in a crypto casino, a meta-bet-punt-gamble-wager-lottery-keno
We do it even though we know
Nothing can rise forever
Widening divide of rich and poor, our weakest link is our highest score
Through the debt ceiling we soar, praying in vain for trickle-down downpour
Nothing can rise forever
Looking for hope to cope with this upward slope, make sense of this endless ascending
Cceaseless increasing, upshifting, lifting, building, filling, this top-up's got to stop
Time to get down, here comes the drop
Drowning in depths of digital din, fads and fashion, ads and admin
But woah, change is in the wind, winding down this over-wound wounded world
’Til we value efficient, fixable things, built to last from stuff that’s renewable from not too far
Then recyclable too in our low-waste home sweet homeostasis
By living seasonally and locally, find your base, choose the path and pace that puts a smile on your face
And whatever you do, do it well and truly, and kindly, you’ll find there’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Health and happiness hang in the balance
There’s no place like
Home sweet homeostasis
Oscillating on a momentary basis
Making our ethics flex every second of the day
Gimme strength as we step into the fray
© Mal Webb 2020
When I was made aware of the Risset rhythm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Risset , I made a four bar beatbox version of it, combined it with the harmonic series the process implies and added Shepard Tones brass lines (to accentuate the endless rise): https://youtu.be/2otKFo79Je0 . I decided to use it as an excuse to write a song about the illusion of perpetual growth and Homeostasis (which I've taken great liberties with the meaning of!) I also incorporated the reverse of the rhythm part with guitar (later in the above video), which makes a nice soundtrack to energy descent and depleting finite resources.
Here's Ky and I performing it live for the first time ever!
As nature's cycles' wobbly wheels wane and wax like a dance of eleven left legs around riffs that roll like eggs, ebb and flow in home sweet homeostasis