Roy Harper has always been an outspoken critic of the society we live in. He speaks of the moral nightmare at the gates and is referring to the claustrophobic suppression of human feeling as the laws, health and safety, safeguarding and moral hypocrisy of our age stifle life out of the individual. We all become regulated cogs in the machine; freedom goes out the window.
This song was written with Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd.
The lyrics speak mountains. They are weighty. What are we to do with this short span of life? Roy’s poetic answer is that we should live it to the full – better short and sweet than long and bitter.
We should be true to our morality and fight for what we believe in. That is what makes life worth living. Anything less is selling ourselves short! We should have a vision of a better way of living and do everything in our power to bring it about. We should stand up against the greedy, selfish bastards who are running this world for their own profit.
That is a world of love, freedom, tolerance, justice and integrity that we should fight to bring in to being. It’s all about quality.
Or we could go off and watch Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent
and the Soaps and forget about it all – leave it to Murdock and Cameron to sort things out!
Short & Sweet
You ask what is the quality of life
Seeking to justify the part you play
And mask, what seems a worthless fate
To strive, to make it any more or less than short and sweet
And you, you are a fantasy, a view
From where you’d like to think the world should see
Be true and you will likely find a few
Building a vision new and justice to your time
And we, we, the immoral men, we dare
Naked and fearless in the elements
We’re free, carefree from tempting fates, aware
And holding off the moral nightmare at the gates
In the garden
But short, short is from you to me, as close
As we all hope to try to help it be
We’re caught watching the dark in the sky, who knows?
Helpless as time itself to hold the time of day
And sweet, sweet as a mountain stream, beholds
Toward a new day breaking in the east
We’ll meet as every future dream unfolds
And surely quality it is at very least
At very least