Arbelos
Prog folk-rock music from Scotland
Fahrenheit 451
The Fireman pays a call.
Words and Music: Noel Chidwick
This is a novel by Ray Bradbury that has made its way into a range of media. It started as a book in 1953, which Bradbury himself later staged as a play. In 1967, François Truffaut turned it into a great movie and, now in 2008, we present it as a song.
Most people take this story to be about destroying books, but that is only part of Ray Bradbury’s frighteningly prophetic vision. In Fahrenheit 451, the ambition of society is to own video screens to cover all four walls of the living room to watch a continuous stream of soap operas. Viewers would become part of the family on the screens, eschewing the real world. Giant screens. Bradbury wrote the book in the 1950s, and here we are in 2009. Take a walk at night, and look through the living room windows and what do you see – huge screens filling the wall…
The fireman paid a call today, he’d heard about my books
He sprayed the shelves with kerosene and calmly lit a tiny match.
The flames grew high, an angry red,
The smoke cloud billowed black with rage
‘Til all remained a sorry state – just a heap of dying ash.
Fahrenheit 451, burn the books! burn the books!
Fahrenheit 451, burn the books with their words of fire.
Fahrenheit 451, burn the books! burn the books!
Fahrenheit 451, burn the books with their words of fear.
Words which leap from page to mind, to tantalize and tease,
Words to fill your heart with warmth, perhaps to raise a cheer.
Stories told of long ago, and harsh realities
Words to tear the flesh away to reveal the truth of fear.
Chorus
When once a child’s eyes shone with the magic in a book
Imagination dancing like a leaf upon a tree
But now the walls are painted bright,
With images to soothe the mind
Video screens like prison walls
Play the role of the Marshalcea.
Chorus
instrumental break (with speaking books)
Conversations concentrate on the ghosts upon the walls
Remote control controls the hand in which it slyly rests
To see a crime and let it pass is still a vicious crime
But who’s to cry when the spirit fails its great and final test?
Chorus X 2
The fireman paid a call today, he’d heard about my books..
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