Sheffield, UK.
Plaza-Song for Devonshire Green, was written by Steve Dutton and Steve Swindells as part of the exhibition S1 Alternative Action Plan held in Sheffield on November 20th 2003. The following lyrics were sung to the melody of We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying by the soprano, Laura Lemmon and released as a limited edition CD.
These words exist within this cry
propose themselves as plaza-like.
By moving through reality
these situations seek out space
A place where skies pour down their loads,
cargos of stars and breezes fall
On peoples of this habitat
upon the hearts and minds of all
Concepts of lightness will begin
to take their form across the greens
It’s embryonic currently
formed from desire’s anxieties.
Sometimes it feels as if this place
enchants as much as a damp brick
Petrifactions more or less
which spare no aspects of a life
Greeks recognised a place from which
something begins its spectacle
A slow projection of a voice
ripples amongst the syringes here
There is a new amorphous shape
the scarlet spleen of cityness
Where blood and sand combine to make
the cult of waste and real estate
Yield to eroticising of
the lubricating spaces here
where civic status is displayed
by spraying golden showers near
These places are already art
a place for love and intellect.
Secrets of lightness and the night
the vital aspects of our times
Aggressive noise revving and roars
provincial cities die slow deaths
Yet please and charm us with your strange
and otherworldly characters
Your puddles and your dust and crap
relates us all to earth and sky
Express a common form of light
a common way of being alive
Move further in rhetoric
where ideologies weaken
Buildings vistas land our sky
A shimmering possibility
Fantastic proposition here
so complex and mysterious
Dissolving details of the day
slip unto unbecomingness
A flask of dew, pleasures and tics
is this not where the dead will go
The flat terrain of er? Language
The flat terrain of ur Language
Oh Blood and Sand! Oh blood and sand!
Oh Blood and Sand! Oh blood and sand!
Oh Blood and Sand! Oh blood and sand!
Oh Blood and Sand! Oh blood and sand!