LYRICS

EARLY NOTES

PHOTOCOPIER

I trudge wearily down the endless, dank, musty corridor To the photocopying machine, The foetid stench of old filing cabinets and stale, cheap coffee Permeating through the lining of my nostrils. Carefully I lift the machine’s heavy lid, Press the green copy button And gaze through the murky, transparent glass Into the blinding, ever-shifting light. The paper feeds into the plastic tray And, as I hold it up to my scrutinising eye, I see the distinct, carbon-copied outline Of my face. I am a dreary office clerk At the end of a weary day at work 5.30 – got to run But the boss wants the photocopying done Take the documents to the machine Lay them on the transparent screen When it’s done, I turn it off But the photocopying will not stop Pha-pha-pha photocopier At the end of the gloomy corridor Churning out facsimiles Filling the world with paper paper Photocopies all it sees Sheep and cows and birds and bees Even copies human beings Till we all are paper Got to run – see you later Jump on the escalator Which one’s which? – oh no These flimsy paper stairs won’t go Copies people, copies shops Trees and cars and stars of pop Boys and girls and crows and babies Prints of the laughing sounds of ladies Pha-pha photocopier At the end of the gloomy corridor When it’s done, it does some more Churning out p-paper pee-p-people We lament all that it brings For it only copies rubbish things Like TV formats, mobile rings And tasteless, trashy records Load/Scan/Copy/Print And, as the dark and dreadful days went by, The photocopier grew in size Until it was bigger than a football pitch. It copied everything – the walls, the floors, The street outside, even me. I tried to flee, but everywhere I went, Photocopies of people I used to know sprang up in front of me. And, when the machine had copied everything on Earth A million, zillion times, Still it grew, until it was bigger than Saturn, And it photocopied the Universe so many times, Nobody could tell which was which. Pha-pha-pha photocopier At the distant edge of Outer Space Doesn’t care about our fate Churning out loads of universes Someone stop this block of hate It’s bigger than the Empire State Get Tom Baker on the case But even he can’t save us And so we arrive at the end of our chilling story of the photocopier. You may sit there in your comfy armchair and scoff, But don’t you see? The photocopier is a metaphor for our corrupt consumer society Which insatiably regurgitates the same old trash over and over again While feebly trying to convince us that everything we see and hear and taste is new. Don’t you see? You fool! I’m Gary Le Strange and I’m glad I’m cleverer than you!

< Chinese Ghost