Food Creates Art

Poets have to eat.

All other artists have to eat as well.

_____

Mark Knopfler - Basil 

(The track is a direct tribute to the prominent British modernist poet Basil Bunting, whom Knopfler personally encountered during the early 1960s while working as a teenage copyboy at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, where Bunting was employed as a sub-editor.)

My Saturday job pays six and six down

A copy boy at the Chronicle

Five cigarettes and two silver half crowns

Meeting Vince at Mark Toney's in town

Boy, do we get around

Basil sits there on the table for subs

But not a part of the Bri-nylon club

Ancient blue sweater, too old for the job

Bored out of his mind

With the Colins and Bobs

I'm a jack and a lad

And I'm up for the world

And I've kissed a Gateshead girl

He calls for a copy boy, grumpy as hell

Poets have to eat as well

What he wouldn't give just to walk out today

To have time to think about time

And young love thrown away

I'm a jack and a lad

And I'm up for the world

And I've kissed a Gateshead girl

Starlings swarming

A cloud over Grainger Street

Over the black church

Over the Black Gate

And the shadowy Keep

He peers through his wire rims

At the fish and chip words

He's supposed to dish up and forget

His drudgery now has become slightly blurred

By one of his Players untipped cigarettes

Bury all joy

Put the poems in sacks

And bury me here with the hacks

In the summer the fair

Will stretch over the Moor

Lovers will lie and make out in the park

Basil puts on his old duffel and scarf

And goes out into the dark

Reasons for one' s speed of living

Every one is rushing forward!
Every time I slow down my steps,
I will be pushed aside.
Before I can take a look at them,
I am immediatley taken over and left behind.

Those who rush fast must have their reasons,
that I can understand.

I walk ahead slower,
I also have my own reasons.
I don't need to be understood, 
I will continue to move on at my own pace.

人人都擁著衝前，
我一慢著腳步，就被撥開。
我未及多看一眼，已被多人超前。
那些衝得快的人，有他們的理由，
我應該能體會。
我行得稍慢，其實也有我的理由。
我不必要你明白，
但我會繼續按著自己的步伐速度前行。

 

 

 

Mark Knopfler - Slow Learner

People say 'Where have you been?'
Or 'Where did you go?'
I'm a slow learner
I do everything slow
It's my way, has to be true
The world goes by me fast
But where you're concerned
I like good things to last
Where's the point in worrying
If we should start a little late
Where's the point in hurrying
When waiting feels so great?
I'm a slow burner
My last train left a while ago
I'm a slow learner
I do everything slow

So where's the point in worrying
If we should start a little late
And where's the point in hurrying
When waiting feels so great?
I'm a slow burner
My last train left a while ago
I'm a slow learner
I do everything slow

Yeah, I'm a slow burner
My last train left a while ago
I'm a slow learner
I do everything slow

We were once so young

We were once so young. 

Until you become old, 

you will never realize that 

you were once so young— 

oh, so young. 

And one day you will recall that 

when you were young, 

you said words you would not say again, 

you took actions you would not take again, 

and you associated with people 

you would not engage with again. 

Or perhaps there are moments, 

buried in the past, 

that you dare not recall at all.

____

Mark Knopfler - 
Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes

_______________________________

Mark Knopfler - 
Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes - 

Cologne Lanxess Arena - 21 June 2015

Laughs and jokes
And drinks and smokes
And no lights on the stairs
We were young, so young
And always broke
Not that we ever cared
Not that we ever cared

Well, the holes in the walls
Were such a lot
Welcome to London town
But when you’re new to it all
And you think you’re hot
You’re not planning on hanging around
People would go on their different ways
I left to start a band
A note came through the letter box
In your childlike hand

Oh, laughs and jokes
And drinks and smokes
And no lights on the stairs
We were young, so young
And always broke
Not that we ever cared
Not that we ever cared

One day I rode to where you were
The doorbell jangled a note
They buzzed me in
I climbed the stairs
In my boots and leather coat
There’s an old brass
Standing there at the top
Without her witch’s broom
It almost seemed like a knocking shop
When the girls came out of their rooms

And they all stood around
And stared at me
Two brunettes and a blonde
Then the old brass shrugged and said
We don’t know where she’s gone
Later on I picked up the ball
And I took off down the line
I suppose by then I’d realised
You’d run into hard times

Oh, laughs and jokes
And drinks and smokes
And no lights on the stairs
We were young, so young
And always broke
Not that we ever cared
Not that we ever cared

Chinese Translation 

除非你開始真的有點老了，

你是永遠不會察覺，你曾經是那麼年輕過！

那時真的那麼年輕啊！

你此時也會記起，你年輕時，

你曾經說過一些話，

現在的你已不敢再說出口;

你曾經做過一些事，現在的你已不敢再做；或及

你曾經交過一些朋友，

現在的你已不敢再聯絡他們...

又或者，

你經歷過一些往事，

現在的你根本一點都不敢再記起。。。