THE SEVEN VEILS

(Words and music: (c) Robin Hill except where stated)

"His nakedness is staggeringly real"

"The Seven Veils" was the second completed collection. Most of the songs originated in the decades between the 1970s and 1990s. The centrepiece of the collection is a medley of pieces that together make up the title "track" - all 25 minutes of it!

The overall collection continues some of the darker themes of "The Light That Shines", but there is also a strong element of life as drama, and, I believe, a movement away from the overly self-aware teenage angst of the first collection.

PAGE HISTORY:

Page added July 2002 - Notes added March 2019 - Scores and Tabs added November 2019 - 3 audio samples added April 2024

More audio samples will follow soon.

All words (and music) are copyrighted. Any adaptation or duplication without consent is a breach of copyright.

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MORE!

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

I don`t know what you`re trying to say
Or what you think you`ve come here for;
Your ragged dance is far too subtle for this puzzled crowd:
The seven veils you cast away
Mean nothing once they hit the floor,
The lyrics of your songs are too obscure,
And no-one solves the riddles in your mime.

Man cannot act by bread alone,
Yet still a crust is welcome now,
And you must try more painfully to speak your thoughts aloud:
For otherwise the weighted stone
Will drag you to an early bow,
With no applause or fervent cries of `More!`-
Just an empty dressing room, and time.

(Contents)

YODELLIN'

(Music: Robin Hill)

(No lyric)

(Contents)

PLEASE DON'T TREMBLE

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

Please don`t tremble now,
The world will turn out right somehow,
The damp which lines your fevered brow
Will vanish with the mist through which you peer;

Do not shake so much,
There`s nothing here to fear, as such,
When warmth will lend its gentler touch
To make your fevered terrors disappear;

===
A haunted dream, a nervous scream,
A waking in the night;
A reaching out, an end to doubt,
An everything`s alright;

A warning bell, a sudden yell,
A terror deep inside,
A warm soft hand, a chasm spanned,
A friendship opened wide;

A darkened sky, a plaintive cry,
A searching through the storm,
Warm arms around, companion found,
A haven, safe and warm;

===
Please don`t tremble so,
The world will work out right, I know,
Be brave, and feel your courage flow
Within this warm liason we hold here.

(Contents)

CHANGES

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

You mustn`t take the blame,
You`re human all the same,
And wiser still for knowing now that life is not a game:
That run of double sixes would have ended anyhow,
So don`t bemoan the timing of the pair of ones you`ve thrown;
For like a choirboy tenor who`s turned wavering baritone,
You`ve nowhere left to go but forwards now.

You`ve travelled now so far,
But still retained your par,
You`re not the first to never know how ignorant you are:
And what you didn`t know was also what you couldn`t prove,
We all know you struck at life in pure self-defence;
But like a man who sits astride a thin and shaky fence,
You have to be more careful how you move.

When you were in the nude,
You thought it rather rude,
But now it seems there`s more to this than simply being crude:
You hold the faulty heirloom like a wrist across a knife,
And plunge it slowly downwards, lost in dreams of growing old;
But like the raincoat flasher who gets frostbite in the cold,
You`ve lost the means by which you once lived life.

You didn`t need to know
That all young children grow,
But all the same you can`t help wondering where the nappies go:
You gaze down all the corridors you`ve crawled your way along,
Peering through the distance at the things you`ve known so well;
But like the nun who stubbed her toe and blurted `******* ****!`,
Your life must be so different from now on.

(Contents)

DO NOT LABOUR

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

Do not labour Sue,
The world can open up for you
Without the need for pain or grief,
The falseness of prepared belief,
The blatant lies of flesh and blood,
False illusions of a god,
Without the wild hypocrisies
Of striving endlessly to please,
Beliefs in purpose, order, or
The mightiness of human law,
Or justice, in a national sect,
In human nature, self respect,
Approval gained in social eyes,
Or all those many other lies
About the need for fame or wealth:
The world is yours, just be yourself.

(Contents)

UNTIL YOU'RE YOUNG AGAIN

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

So dreaming of the moon again, you stroll across the stage,
The footlights casting shadows on the songs you try to sing,
And every song reminds you of the monuments of age:
They`re precious, but they`ll never mean a thing.....

.....And if the rows of empty seats keep telling you you`re through,
If your shattered eardrums are driving you insane,
And if the band surrounding you are playing something new,
They`re keeping time until you`re young again.

The bored and tired audience refuse to clap their hands,
The cigarettes they smoke don`t light the happy times you knew,
Not one of them is certain who is playing in the band:
They only know the singer isn`t you.....

.....And if your tiny flute`s drowned when the bass is far too loud,
If you wonder who it is that sings that shrill refrain,
And if your words are too obscure to ever reach the crowd,
They`re holding pitch until you`re young again.....

.....And if the flashing lightshow makes everything stop dead,
If the screeching feedback keeps on ringing through your brain,
And if the ragged band keep playing in minor keys instead,
They`re tuning up until you`re young again.....

.....And if your husky voice can`t find the note that`s in your head,
It never will, until you`re young again.

(Contents)

SOLILOQUY

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

Wipe your brow,
For all your yesterdays, in lines of age,
Reflect in your brief candle`s fading flame,
An alibi of all that`s gone before
Within this petty place of grief and pain;

Take a bow,
You`ve strutted and fretted your hour upon the stage,
And now it`s time to exit whence you came,
A walking shadow, slipping through the door
To dusty death, an idiot heard no more,
To the last brief syllable of time`s long reign;

===

Within the theatre,
The ghost that cannot rest prowls endlessly,
Acting, through a long eternity,
The tragi-comedy
Of his soliloquy;

===

I know, somehow,
You need to shed the fury and the rage,
Accept, perhaps, your fair share of the blame,
And come to terms with this, your fatal flaw
Which made foul ghosts of all the kings you`ve slain,
And summoned Burnham Wood to Dunsinane:
For otherwise, in all that still remains,
Is tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, for evermore.

(Contents)

NO REGRETS?

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

The glass once seemed so high,
I never saw the time slip by,
But nearly all the sand has come to rest:
And sorry I may be,
But all the things that worked for me
Are now all done, and perhaps that`s for the best.

For now I leave the fields
Where madmen rake explosive yields;
A quiet peaceful life was all I sought:
I tried to set them right,
But no-one saw my dreamy light
Or heeded that distinction, `is` and `ought`.

And in the times gone by,
One thing that I chose to deny
Will now be one more thing for me to learn:
I wouldn`t mind at all
If it wasn`t that, despite it all,
The world will always turn.

(Contents)

NOT MAD

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

Don`t pretend
You`ve ever found the end,
Your answer`s never true:
But don`t be afraid,
You cannot be betrayed
By that which thrives in you;

And be yourself,
Don`t try to fool yourself,
You cannot hide from bluff;
Say what you feel,
Believe it to be real,
For it is real enough;

Speak your mind,
And you will truly find
Great joy in all you give;
And I`ll be glad,
For I will not be mad-
Madness is relative.

(Contents)

THE SEVEN VEILS

(Words and music: Robin Hill)

MAIN THEME

(Instrumental - no lyric)

===

BIRTH

Behind thick walls the novice crawls
Into the sunlit day,
Ready for the things he`ll never notice slip away:
The madness has already half-begun,
His destiny will shed the seven veils one by one.

===

CHILDHOOD

Changes never come,
Happiness is all,
Inside the mind where summer leaves can never die or fall;
Lost within the power of a rhyme,
Disinterested in emptiness and time,
Hope rises like a phoenix from the flames
Of joy which warm these timeless childhood games,
Offering no call upon their names,
Delivering no beat upon the drum.

===

MAIN THEME - REPRISE

(Instrumental - no lyric)

===

YOUTH

Yet one day the percussion drives a slightly different beat,
Opting now for energy and pace;
Unseen are those carefree times, except for just a trace,
The player, over-shattered by that first taste of defeat,
Has difficulty standing on his feet.

===

ROMANCE

Remembering the days
Of old now left behind,
Madness works its ways
And gives him peace of mind;
Not caring how the drum begins to fade,
Collapsing all the conquests that he`s made,
Endurance tries to peer out through the haze.

===

MARRIAGE

Madness, now, begins to take a steady hold,
As one more tick is struck upon the list;
Respect, once second fiddle, now must shine like gold,
Reality, once nothing, now must not grow old,
Inspiration never now be missed;
And cares which once encompassed worlds must slowly fade away,
Giving rise to other petty cares from day to day,
Exciting no-one more along the way.

===

PRIME

Perhaps he never saw the garments slide,
Revealing all the worthlessness and pride
Inside his feeble brain;
More quickly still though now he is denied
Everything which once could make him sane.

===

OLD AGE

Only when these worthless cares are dropped beneath the sea,
Left to rust like wrecks will he be free,
Delivered from the weariness of nothing;

And only when the madness sets in faster than before,
Greater than the man, can he be sure
Everything that went was just for nothing.

===

DEATH

Duty calls at last, the sand has run;
Echoes from the past flit one by one
Around his weary head; his senses reel;
The seven veils are gone, the dance is dead;
His nakedness is staggeringly real.

(Contents)

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