Faculty X - Peter Hammill

Hope by and by, hope by and by*

Motes in the eye, portcullis is shut…

A skull isn’t much

Of a c-c-castle to live in

When I know that the change is going to come,

The change has got to come.

Explosions in the brain attest to it.

Evolution down the drain —

Let all the rest do it.

Oh yeah, the only result

Is cumulative drek.

It won’t be the drug,

It won’t be the sex,

It’s got to be the Faculty X.

Looking for a method, I play a straight bat,

Throw away the chances to slip.

Yeah, you talk about the average —

I don’t care about that

And my words are only giving me lip

When I know that the change has got to come,

The change has got to come,

Or what am I living for?

Or why am I here?

I’m running, I give in more,

Far away from the near.

Go meta-physical world,

The sign that protects.

It wasn’t the last,

It won’t be the next,

It’s Faculty X.

Reading seers, sages, prophets, obscurantist tracts,

Draining the elixir to the dregs;

Active yeast in the bottom is on the attack

And it leaves me without any legs to stand on.

Still I hope that the change will come.

Meanwhile I don’t know,

I think I’ll have to go,

Go for the governing body

My consciousness elects.

It won’t be so clear,

It won’t be direct,

It’s all that I fear,

It’s all I suspect

And I’ll disappear in Faculty X.

I pluck all these characters out of thin air,

I push them down into the lungs;

I infuse them with meaning as much as I dare.

Stretch out for the shoreline and wait for the wave…