I Was a Maoist Intellectual - Momus

I always knew that I could seize the world’s imagination

And show the possibilities for transformation

I saw a nation in decay, but also a solution: Permanent

cultural revolution

Whenever I played my protest songs the press applauded me

Rolled out the red carpet, parted the Red Sea

But the petit bourgeois philistines stayed away

They preferred their artists to have nothing to say

How did I pass my time on earth?

Now it can be revealed:

I was a Maoist intellectual in the entertainment field

I showed the people how they lived and told them it was bad

Showed them the insanity inside the bureaucrat

And the archetypes and stereotypes that were my stock in trade

Toppled all the ivory towers that privilege had made

Though I tried to change your mind I never tried your patience

All I tried to do was to point out your exploitation

But the powers that be took this to be a personal insult

And refused to help me build my personality cult

How did I pass my time an earth, what on earth got into me?

I was a Maoist intellectual in the music industry

I left the normal world behind and started living in

A hinterland between dissolution and self discipline

I burned the midnight oil to build my way of seeing

A miner at the coal face of meaning

The rich despised the songs I wrote which told the poor their worth

Told the shy to speak and told the meek to take the earth

But my downfall came from being three things the working classes hated:

Agitated, organised and over-educated

How did I pass my time on earth, how did I bear witness?

As a Maoist intellectual in the entertainment business

And how was I treated in this world and in this industry?

As a Maoist intellectual in a business would be

I became a hotel doorman, I stood there on the doormat

Clutching my forgotten discs in their forgotten format

Trying to hand them out to all the stars who sauntered in

The ones who hadn’t been like me, who hadn’t lived in vain

I gave up ideology the day I lost my looks

I never found a publisher for my little red books

When I died the energy released by my frustration

Was nearly enough for re-incarnation

But if I could live my life again the last thing that I’d be

Is a Maoist intellectual in the music industry

No, if I could live my life again I think I’d like to be

The man whose job is to stop the men who think like me

Yeah!

If l could live my life again that’d be the thing to be

The man who plots the stumbling blocks

In the lives of the likes of me!