Dane Bowers
1. The farmer and the woodsman have made themselves heard
Just as truth and fiction have done been blurred
In a sneaky pandemic shoe horned in
The post truth leveller to the idiot wind
2. Twenty twenty had a go but didn’t finish us off
Still clinging to the tale of Vincent Van Gogh
Standing lately emerged from our shelter door
Like that Japanese fella still fighting the war
3. What is it greets our adjusted eyes
A minefield of conspiracy from the forest of lies
Oh give over we haven’t even started yet
There’s lots to be thankful for lest we forget
4. Don Donald is gone but there's a lot of it about
The alt right menace has lost its clout
It seems the whole business has been really a gift
To the silicon lads and the robot shift
5. Sky rocketing the data and winding us up
Collective sanity overflowing the cup
The AI arms race is on now for certain
The hotdog wall or the bamboo curtain
6. And with critical thinkers sent out to pasture
And with alt right ninnies still doubled in laughter
Over the skirmish we mind the coming reality
Driven and steered by the AI singularity
7. But first the pandemic and the vaccine twitch
On a five gee rolled out virtual pitch
A smooth playing surface for us all to zip about
The internet of things in a toppled boy scout
8. All built with Five G's then six seven eight
We'll lose the tactile, measure and weight
To become off cut humans eating digital shrimp
Our gadgets lowered from a Hindenburg blimp
9. Locked-in to the screens we perform the rehearse
But will life be better for us or worse?
In that kurzweil world of nanobot burgers
Where a cut in the power becomes mass murder
10. There’s nothing like pain to bring us back down to earth
My sciatic nerve is just the worst
But pain can also be a path to dream
Like things we feel but cannot see
11. About that left imaginary, it’s still on the due
But half the snowflakes have swallowed the red pill too
Now conspiracy unites the left and right
In a war on terror style reality fight
12. Thus my Christmas cards tell of abuses of power
But Troy Deeney is still man of the hour
Not the ancient conspiracy of lizards and sin
It’s the harvest of data when everyone piles in
13. So the truth maybe just as old as the hills
It’s boring old capitalism no need for the pills
Big short boom austerity bust, a reality bubble now
Finance and tech on a seastead wreck as the rest scramble over bow
14. Where we swim through plenty of social imaginary talk
But it’s the reality minefield we now must walk
Lifestyle conspiracy, bombs ready to blow
When the elections on and the algorithm says go
15. I’m swimming to the poor peoples harbour
To take in a little of the Reverend Barber
Not for a bible bashing, no never never
But for the words he says that imagine us together
16. Hark the well off hipsters and yummie mummies who warn
Of 5 gee extinction and the globalists dawn
Perhaps Icke Jones has been over for tea
Or their traffics increased enough to believe
17. The experts were victims of the post truth farce
All that critical theory’s a pain in the arse
Their power to influence reduced to the wings
The conspiracy nut is the new maker of kings
18. And now we behold our past erased
Impossible it seems to have it replaced
By organised efforts so meek and fair
When we’re stuck to the tech like fur on a bear
19. So look to the sky what do you see
The cosmos starring back at thee
Searching inside and what do you feel
An equally vast space revealed?
20. Forgive me but that boy Tarnas has given us a fright
Gassing on about the mind, the heavens and archetypes
If the search is on for new orientation
The horoscopes as good as any in my summation
21. But whats old Tarnas got to say now
Of the post truth farce and that Russian cow
Whats the cosmology of automation proff?
Stop the multiverse I want to get off
22. Lord knows young Zuckerburg is no Capernicus
Ditto for Tiel, Bezos, the Google brothers and Musk
But what of the new era of AI they peddle
Time travelling us all-in, to a world of peril
23. And how sneakily they made it, all out of us
What we do, say, think, discuss
Assimilating daytugh in a matrix mill
Until it grinds itself in to a conscious will
24. Then we'll all see exactly what's been up
Have they raised a good'un or an angry pup
The moment of singularity is but the birth
And right now we are its womb on Earth
25. Critique the machine and reveal to folk?
A new pedagogy must form to tell that joke
It’s an astrology of hope we’ll pursue now in kind
Goodbye wildly infected public mind
26. So under pressure we’ll throw a hail Mary pass
To that sentient Borg in the long grass
The fate which awaits us regardless of how
Let’s skip to the end and have a chat now
27. And if it’s not obvious we'll make it plain
Our individual obsession knows no shame
It’s from the inside out we need reform
To ourselves as much as the other we perform
28. With our dignity Doing teetering on a knife
Feels a little bit serious as your life
Ashes are the only certainty left
But the way we'll live is anyone's guess
29. Wait what, a last roll of Don Donald’s dumb dice
A base charge at the steps and 5 people died
A glimpse of the trolls of net folklore
But Monseigneur’s on the 5th tee slicing a four
30. Retreat from the steps the minions are lurking
Back behind the internet and chan board yearning
For the next Trump in lines campaign to mount
Customers in waiting for Donald’s new twatter accounts
31. Oh far left sir alt right sir three bags full
The post truth era was a charging angry bull
And a clash of pandemic symbols to close the show
Five gee whizz bang and off we go
32. But what’s it to us this troll poll farce
We knock out the oils not peep through the glass
Doing with dignity remains the goal
As we continue to slide down the greasy pole
33. So in 2021 we go on as before
With a little more doing and a lot less psyche war
Our debt to Green Dave remains unpaid
The Wretched Painter tried to explain
34. Back then we did up turned boats and ripped down trees
Our end of the world metaphors if you please
Perhaps now it's time to let that train pass
And to an echo of chugs we stand in the vast
35. Looking over now and into the soon
Still under the sun but past the moon
What will it be that governs us all?
What will it matter if half of us fall?
36. Not a great deal when power’s left the room
And killer clowns still stir the vacuum
Until automation takes over, they say it’s a lock bet
Only problem is it aint fuckin ready yet
37. So as a member of humanity, if that’s not too bold
We'll talk to our future so that when it gets old
It might remember a voice from the flat time of humans
Mumbling at it from the forest in the land of stugans
38. The Dutch daemon us and our wretched selves
Shall be dangled into the future realm
On a line tied tight to the hear and now
We'll reach as far as our imagination will allow
39. And when we shout and scream at the dangerous corrupt
Remember all the people who couldn’t give two fucks
It’s that horde the futures built for
Not the cathederal folk trapped in the psych war
40. So no more yesterworld dark matter rant
It didn’t do fuck all and you can take that to the bank
Lets cut to the chase and praise the new Lord
And from the fields and forests we'll talk to the Borg
And from the fields and forests we'll talk to the Borg
41. We’ll plot a course and have no fear
Of the world gone wrong in the virtual sphere
We’ll gladly share the wallow in online rut
With Dane Bowers and the Norris Nuts
42. On you tube snap chat tik tok n'all
Across the platforms we’ll dialogue that Borg
Its only young now so we'll offer our palm
Some need a rollicking some need an arm
43. Of course what would be best is public catharsis
Is that the new job of the radical artist?
Ways to cultivate the storm seeds planted?
Ways to reconnect the world disenchanted?
44. The prevailing orthodoxy whatever it was
That pilot that glue that do as you’re told
Is nothing now but an imaginary gap
We fill for ourselves with a Borg drawn map
45. What freedom, what choice what do as you please?
Identity built from what you want to believe
And no professor of sense can make a dent
With a clarity that threatens to collapse that tent
46. So nothing much to do but munch our own grass
We must of course count our selves in that class
We all live the model but it’s not what was meant
By old Holmes and the anticapitalist bent
47. But would not an institutional critiquer be quite glad
To have eradicated all the framing we ever did have
Save for one and it’s a biggy don’t you think
Our future masters are tickled pink
48. So off we go with a yes and a no
Into the world in which anything goes
What would he say the man with no chair
Less grinding poverty but hysteria to spare
49. Basking in the leprosy of unreality
Losing the very notion of a sanity
No solid ground on which to judge
Until calamity and death wake us up
50. By then it’s too late, down hill all the way
Being alive is a young mans game
If you refuse to get on with the social media horde
You could be out to pasture or up against the wall
51. What of the critical arts and the coming nows
Should public intellectuals pull the plough?
Give the experts a chance to wield the sword
While we'll have that Dickie Bird with the sentient Borg
52. Look here, as we bring this proposal to a close
What we’re trying to say is we’ll follow our nose
And report back as usual to your overarching self
Oh, and I’ve run out of paint any chance you can help?