Art Speaks In Tongues

Steve Kilbey

Appears On:

This song was reworked & reimagined as the HuDost & Steve Kilbey song "The Muse (Objective Art)" from The Word is... (2015).

Lyrics (unofficial)

[rev. Sept. 17, 2016]

Art speaks in tongues
Art speaks in blocks of black plastic
With hieroglyphic jelly babies glowing in the darkness
Art speaks in throbbing ebbing slabs of sound
Straight from string or sampler
Art and furniture and music
Where does one begin and where does another end
Art imitates life, life imitates art
Where does one start and where does another lead off
Art moves through time and time moves through art
Thus we are entangled by the laws of music
And the geometry of the great Masters
Art contains everything yet is empty in itself
It remains an implication, a vague shape
It remains the shadow of your thoughts
It remains seen or heard and experienced maybe elsewhere
Life love and art, the world turns and we create

This night aches with memories
A single black slab of centuries
Simple masks surrounded
The future comes dressed in a thousand past blessings
In the beginning is the word
Nobody knows what that word was
Heaven will reverberate to your softer skin
Hell will rattle to your scorn and prattle
Objective art can always be hung on the walls of your life
Sound of paint fading
Don't you hear?
The message is in your mind

And art speaks
And art speaks in tongues
Art speaks in tongues

Art speaks in tongues
Art speaks in blocks of black plastic
With hieroglyphic jelly babies glowing in the darkness
Art speaks in throbbing ebbing slabs of sound
Straight from string or sampler
Art and furniture and music
Where does one begin and where does another end
Art imitates life, life imitates art
Where does one start and where does another lead off
Art moves through time and time moves through art
Thus we are entangled my the laws of music
And the geometry of the great Masters
Art contains everything yet is empty in itself
It remains an implication, a vague shape
It remains in the shadow of your thoughts
It remains seen or heard and experienced maybe elsewhere
Life love and art, the world turns, we create

This life, it aches with memory
This life, it aches with memory
[Repeated many more times]