A short musical film of Mithridates in a number of acts, which touch on everything. The government, the Joe Blows, the mass media, the pandemic, the alleged indignados incapable of action, the people who pushed their way into the internet and got lost, the artistic clique. A torrential 12 minutes…
The original:
Sound
Text
Here is some more from Mithridates
Government with spoon and fork on the ready
And you suddenly have a nobody for tyrant
A real live PM, with every flunkie,
Backroom boy and go-getter in his pocket.
All of them birds of Aristofunny
And I’d say, “Relax my friend, he’s pulling our leg”,
This Louis Seize of ours, this roi, this anax,
If people all day long were not just gulping Xanax.
Minister of loathing, of repulsion and the primitive
Freely giving lessons in how leaders take initiative.
And the Ministry of the Extreme Unction with benighted regularity
Gives a new dimension to the meaning of vulgarity.
Lipstick on the pig, and all the rights
Passing as if by magic on eventful parliamentary nights.
They push through bills atrocious on the ground
It’s easy come and easy go and no-one hears a sound.
Constitutional outrage, without even a shrug,
Psychotropic situations and done without a drug.
The eight-hour day was silly and should never have been made
And every hour’s overtime will now remain unpaid.
Outside of the parish the faithful march protesting
Imagine that big daddy, is it something worth contesting?
For every question you have they have a riot squad for an answer,
A dystopian land of hostages to poverty and cancer.
It may look like repression but it’s meant for your protection.
A paddy wagon is comfortable and facilitates inspection.
Blue uniforms in the classroom make it easier, you will agree
To beat and gas the students who rabbit on about being free.
But listen to what’s best of all the changes in the home:
The chance to have the riot police inside your living room.
Sitting in their helmets with the air-conditioning on
The burglar alarm you needed once is something dead and gone.
The talk is of development and foolie (Mitsotakis) functional
Enjoys it courting ridicule at level international.
And Brussels laughs its head off as the next-door neighbours even
Dare to send out fishing boats to empty the Aegean.
This is why the wonder boy, currying favour with celebs,
Invested in a frigate that would really wow the plebs.
This was deemed most suitable for serving out fair dinkum
To the struggling lower middle class with their tiny shrinking income.
Framed by flashy wannabes, attache cases bursting
With bogus reference letters, all identically thirsting.
The incorrigibly mindless unrelenting and
Self-evidently unpunished and well-shielded and
Intolerably unflappable, illiterate and insolvent
Hell-hound not intending ever ever to be different.
The sidekick, the horse trader, revocably upmarket,
Chiseled in a lead and gold lamp.
With millions from here the person who fixes cisterns
Should develop little muscles in some relatives.
Bring a gift for some repairs
To sisters-in-law, cousins, for favours and so on, in obscurity,
Paranoia, in the chronicles of Narnia, so many scandals
That they do not fit even in Scania.
Their deficit is honey and their concern
Is to leave a mark in their name, again.
ACT II
I have a sixth sense and I see dead people
Sucking though dead at the prime ministerial nipple
Voters, busybodies, watching someone else’s dream
Whose only loyalty is to a football team
A little food and Gizmo goes and turns into a Gremlin
And hungry apoliticals turn fascist while assembling
The far-right pillars of society seek a turncoat
And all the goats are looking for a scapegoat
Introduce the owner of Macedonia
Hit me with some headlines, make me lonelier
And refugees deprived of electricity
Have lost all hope of any more publicity.
Cunning “you’re quite right buts” with hemorrhoids
Leave fly-blown filth which everyone avoids.
Politicians who just steal no longer thrill us,
It’s much more fun to vote for those who kill us.
Keep your job and bend however needed
Through history greasy Greeks always succeeded
You’ve learned to play Hugh Hefner with borrowed cash
And now with banging saucepans you’re a smash
You hold your nose up high
In this land where bums are low.
Alternative as always in punctured air sole shoes
With some hogwash to deliver
And your mind some other place.
You’re something of a slave I think
As you trail the elephant.
Watch your step, Joe Blow you numbskull,
You’ve grown too used to dildos and
You’ll think there’s nothing wrong with that.
All for the popolo, not a handle, I stake my arse
And you and I are suffering pain from all this conflict.
Everything corrupt, preserved in camphor.
I could not care less: it’s what I planned for.
But you, you care about your butt, you love it madly.
Don’t let your pangs of conscience treat you badly.
You think that you’re elite but you’re a plebby
You feel petty bourgeois or simply petty
For sure you’re a part of high society,
You’re the son of Grab-it-all and Grab-it-quickly.
You’re not one of the former or the latter.
You’re somewhere in between. You just don’t matter.
It’s better to be last than to have expired.
Because the person who is last will still get hired.
ACT III
Information from the media is a fright
With a permanent trend to veer towards the right
Stylish presentation of a theme of great allure
Regurgitated memorized like contents of a sewer
Ridicule, exclusion, smearing night and day
Eyebrows lifted permanently will soon be stuck that way.
Mouthwashed mouths and corps of corpses clogging up the channel
Dragged onboard with grappling hooks to supplement the panel.
Sponging off saliva they enjoy the candlelight
The dirt swept under the carpet will be quietly dumped at night.
Playing games of chance with euros like a boob
This must be the reason you take orders from the tube.
It’s time to watch the news, you see, down in the principality,
Fakery on fakery a rotten mockery of reality.
Hush now kids, the TV speaks, its wish is our command
For this is now the ministry that’s governing the land.
There are presents here for everyone and scandalmongering galore
Fake news for every purpose served promptly on the hour.
Everyone must stay in bed until the storm has passed
And “naturellement” the Pasta Flora will be headlines
Since you asked. The shit will fly both right and left you know
Thrown in a spiral, with propaganda called fake news
And papier-mache euros used to make statues.
The leader ‘s on the telly for a tete-a-tete
Pinocchio trading new ideas with Pinochet.
The vilest and most cunning machinations
Can be turned into superb public relations
Stay cool, remember “Hakuna Matata”
They can’t call you a terrorist without data.
No harm is done this time and they can go to hell
The news is simply splendid for the village jezebel.
Let’s hope the sordid details can be kept under the mat.
We’d have our heads stuck on a pike and I wouldn’t fancy that.
ACT IV
Now for the pandemic, the compulsory state of panic
If you’re not hysterical you’ll lose the neighbours’ trust
Now everything’s illegal and everyone’s afraid
Don’t attempt to lift a finger, it will only cause a fuss
Universal misery has become an industry
We’re heading straight for hell and you don’t want to miss the bus
Macabre statistics to frighten every peasant
The state is somewhere far away, what point in being present?
Deceit is more humane than clubbing on the head
With COVID as the reason for anyone who’s dead.
Break the quarantines, the handouts, the beatings and the fines,
The sadism, the censorship, the unanswered telephone lines.
Pandemics now necessitate the holding of the breath
As hospitals prioritize incentivizing death.
I’ve had enough austerity. I’m getting sick of waiting
I’ve had enough indebtedness and lockdowns escalating.
When every nurse is given leave to call herself a doctor
And hospitals steal equipment with every janitor called a proctor
Not a penny can be found to buy another ICU
And a Megadeth at home’s a likely fate for me and you.
Protective measures are imposed in hopeful expectation
Of staving off emergency, not a cause for celebration.
Measures they decide upon by tossing up a coin
Which make you feel as if you’ve just been booted in the groin.
Impatiently awaiting the next contradictory measure
That’s temporarily permanent, perennial displeasure
“Personal accountability” is what his highness said
Unless you are the government or working in its stead.
Come in please guests, its tourism time, we’re open now for bizoners.
No more disgraceful advocates of lockdown and of prisoners.
We may be broke and pale and ill after such long confinement
But at least we’re safe. And our visitors have money and refinement.
What a stupid dynasty, conspiring here and there
To change the Constitution to the title for a square.
Expert committees specialized in no specific thing
Individuals who press their lips upon the papal ring.
But they are not religious, name a faith and they will mock it.
They will have a ready substitute to take out of their pocket.
Fearmongers on the box exposing incest
And I laugh at someone’s butt at the gay rights inquest
Prison wardens are guys I’m proud to be among
As a slow-release tablet leaks under my tongue
It’s off to work by bus each morn and home again at nine
Bread, olives and COVID 19, some people think that’s fine.
No freedom but let’s attempt not to be greedy
We’ve got Netflix and Apple Store. Let’s not forget the needy.
Every household is a jungle uncontrolled and wild
The child threatens the mother and the mother beats the child
Young and old sit at their screens and fumble with their mouse
Our lives are socially distanced and we never leave the house
A gathering in the home is something shocking and taboo
The next door neighbour’s watching every single thing you do
This epidemic so they say has come to stay
What can anyone do to make it go away?
Some are paying close attention, others standing to attention,
Others cross the whole thing out and some regret it
Others in their weekend homes feeling terribly alone
But there are others simply trying to forget it.
One Nazi occupation is enough for any nation
Nobody is in the mood for your interpretation.
Leave a little present for the children of the Kaiser
Let’s hope good use is made of all those billions owned by Pfizer.
And when the time has come for us to welcome herd immunity
Let’s see how many bees remain alive in our community.
And when the COVID whirlwind has moved on and passed us by.
We can look around and wonder why it is we didn’t die.
ACT V
The phoney, the punk, the poser, the fake
Clinks a glass in celebration of conformity.
Your face is dripping eyelashes your words are made of wood
Take your political correctness and stick it in your rectum
When they call for mobilization
Send a poem for publication
Make a statement and declare the latest figures on the air
Let the kiddies do a demo if they want.
Nobody is trying to find a Samson for our lion
Or expect s to see two balls between your legs
When critique is merely acting and words are decoration
Don’t criticise yourself I truly beg.
You’re righter than the righteous
And more Christian than Christ
And straighter than the straightest of the straight.
You like to be a censor of the rhetoric of hate
But not to have your solidarity examined
Before you do your logout and close your little app.
If your next door neighbour dropped dead at your feet
It’s possible you wouldn’t give a crap.
ACT VI
Everybody knows that we all have our views
That Internet misleads us all is not exactly news
Even if you lie you’ll still be able to belong
You’re encouraged to say anything, as long as it is wrong
Scroll down to the comments underneath your wisest words
And watch the trolls all do their best to feed you to the birds
Carnivorous comments flank remarks of strange improbability
Zombies of Lord Voldemort
With keyboard capability.
Unfollow, block, report and mute The goats insult the sheep
With sadism orgasmic that’s as shallow as it’s deep.
An avalanche of comments intelligent and silly
More numerous than the glimpses of lady Strella’s willy
With the madam scrutinizing from the corner of her eye
And we’re running out of leftovers and where’s the WiFI?
Post your little photos of puppies and teddy bears
A pot of tea some fruit a row of ornamental chairs.
A double chin, your fingernails, your legs, the sandy shore.
A selfie in the landscape, could you want anything more?
ACT VII
And we artistic parasites at the door
Swallow all the insults served up raw
By vegetarians and pansies and featherweights and dandies
And clowns who say that I’m a lazy mutt
And politicians keep their muzzles firmly shut.
They think the safest cure is
To be mistaken for a tourist
Or an early morning jogger
Or a journalist.
With artists all discredited, indifference is merited
When the world is in the mess it is, luxuries are necessities
If the world goes down the drain, the theatre will remain,
For after all it has already been perverted.
It suits that in this age when unconcern is all the rage
Who really wants to preach to the converted?
Life’s reality show can burn your fingers, as you know
Look in your back pocket to find cover
Power’s chosen favourites can look after themselves
There won’t be any handshakes even when the game is over
That is why that I could never serve the governmental power
But only be its husband and its secret closet lover.
