Louange à Léternité de Saint Erik.

17th May 2016.

Louange à L'éternité de Saint Erik

Upon this 150th anniversary of thy birth

All praise to thee Saint Erik

Patron of the musically perverse

Of the sonically and socially misfitting

Praise to thee, oh wearer of the grey velvet suit

That thou purchased in a batch of seven

Identical

And wore as thy habit for the rest of thy earthly life

Praise to thee

Oh, father of the dessicated embryo

May thy static harmonies

And thy scorning of musical development

Inspire us to a new vision

In a world blighted by growth

Oh, great champion of the small

And of the repetitive

To thee we give great thanks

Oh, great fosterer of the musically insignificant -

Of musical furniture

Mayst thou inspire us

To mingle our sounds promiscuously

With the metallic ambience of knives, forks and spoons colliding

As long as we all shall live

Oh, furious and sharp-tongued critic

Of the academy and of the bureaucratic

May thy words inspire us unto opposition to all that destroys the human soul

Oh, great fosterer of ambiguity

And the hoax

Oh, thou great Gymnopedist and phonmetrician

Priest of the absurd

And the mundane

May thy cheeky trickery urge us

To depose from power all those who seek to aggrandise themselves

To piss on the bonfire of their vanity

Oh, great saint of musical and quotidian poverty

Oh, high priest of cabaret

And gorgeous unifier of disparate worlds

May thy musical interbreeding bring us to a deeper love of the human spirit

In all its forms

Upon this day

We take courage from thy outsider-ness

And thy perseverance in the face of ridicule

From thy love of the smallest and the shallowest

As routes to the deepest and the most huge

Oh, great and tiny Saint Erik

Upon this 150th anniversary of thy birth

We look to thee

For inspiration

And courage

To maintain our perversities

In the face of ever-greater conformity

In spirit we don thy grey velvet garb

As a mark of our refusal

And our affirmation