FROM THE SAME box of old papers I wrote about last week comes another set of lyrics. This time for The Void – a song composed in 1974 when I was 18. 

Strangely, since I hadn’t attended a service since my early teens, I have a vivid memory of singing The Void to the Minister of our local Presbyterian church in Trentham, Upper Hutt, who had dropped by to sort out the Sunday hymns with my mother, the church organist. He was interested to know what I was trying to say in the song. “It’s my vision of the future”, I told him. “It’s about the loss of the things that really matter to New Zealanders: their quarter-acre sections, their family homes, their faith in the future.”

He frowned. “That’s a pretty bleak vision. Can you tell me why everyone in the song drinks to the unemployed? Why are they so glad to see them?” 

My answer reflected the dark predictions contained in Socialist Action – the Trotskyist newspaper I purchased regularly from the young comrades positioned outside Wellington Railway Station. As the Keynesian golden weather turned dark and stormy, mass unemployment was seen as the harbinger of Capitalism’s doom. In drinking to the unemployed, the characters in the song are, subconsciously, drinking to ‘The Revolution’.

Not that I explained it to the puzzled clergyman in quite those terms. Even so, he gave me a long level look – and shuddered.

As the shadows trickled down,

The dusty gutters of the town,

I found a bar, some DB Brown,

Raised my glass

And looked around.

I saw the scholar and his book.

Caught his very worried look.

He took the bait from his master’s hook,

And now he understands

That he’s caught.

He cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!

“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!

“Here’s to all you unemployed!

I’m overjoyed

To see you here.

I saw the woman fully grown,

Sitting there all on her own,

Tired of living like a drone,

She wore her boredom

Like a precious stone.

She cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!

“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!

“Here’s to all you unemployed!

I’m overjoyed

To see you here.

I saw the children at their play

Tell the Sun to go away.

“We much prefer the night today!”

That’s what I heard

The future say.

And I cried: “Here’s to living in the Void!

“Here’s to dwelling multi-storied!

“Here’s to all you unemployed!

I’m overjoyed

To see you here.

Chris Trotter 1974