Combustible Machine

Jean Tinguely- Homage to New York    1960

My wife played live last weekend at the Plush Gallery in Dallas. The show went well and she was able to get a good video of the show despite the crowd noise. You can view all of the songs from the show on her blog, Lived as Art. I am focusing here on one of my favorites from the show, called Altrusim. Her music has the amazing pop ability to worm its way inside your head and stay there for days, but then, if you care to look at the lyrics, you are faced with something much darker and much less pop...


Her songs never address one single issue, but usually poetically encompass a whole host of issues...With this song, Altruism, from what she has told me, she was addressing the volatility of the art market in general as well as volatility in relationships by focusing specifically on the work of the artist Jean Tinguely. The most famous of Tinguely's works were complex and convoluted  Dada influenced machines that were designed to self-destruct as critiques of the mechanization and overproduction of material goods.


Her lyrics for the song are here after the break:
Altruism:

When the circuit closes the resistor overheats, the piano sings a phoenix song.
Do your favorite trick again-- your hand engulfed in flame--
proof that it's collapsing as planned to un-plan.

You combustible machine, you live the life you mean longer than you mean to.
Combustible machine, predictably obscene, destroy enjoying you.

An elegant crowd invited to watch, the uninformed consumed.

If the mechanism fails-- left standing disturbed and sound, a record of your intentions
in a museum somewhere, a tribute to failure's failings each time
one would try and save a suicide by suicide.

You combustible machine, you live the life you mean longer than you mean to.
You live the life you mean longer than you mean to.