Say Goodbye

(Lyrics from the album 'Hunters and Collectors - Under One Roof - Live at the Coogee Hotel')
 

Audio: Thumping bass and drums
 

Vision:
A man stands shivering in the doorway of his girlfriend's house, soaked through from the pouring rain. A young woman, positioned to prevent him from entering is screaming at him, grinding her finger hard into his breastbone.

Audio: "... and she said...she said...YOU-don't-make-me-feel...like-I'm-a-women...anymore"


Text begins: 

Nothing is resisted as much as change. 

For those who are accustomed to any kind of routine change is a direct threat. Because change can be the catalyst that wastes away relationships, exposes uncertainties, dilutes professional expertise and presents the spectre of failure.

For those under attack from change it is a frightening, intimidating threat, a lurching inept monster which knows no limits - takes no prisoners. A bull in a china shop. A tragedy waiting to happen.

But here the paradox is profound, an almost absurd contradiction.

The coming of change is inevitable, unavoidable and inescapable.

Audio: "..Just as black is white, and just as night is day, the light is going to leave us...together-we-will-fade-away.."


Text continues: 

Change is often subconsciously associated with an ending - the traumatic passing of a loved one, the disturbing collapse of a relationship or the loss of something precious. Everywhere change is tinged with doubt and distrust and even where it is recognised to be advantageous, it occurs rarely without suspicion.

Audio: (loudly) "...Do you see what I see? ...do you see what I see? ...do you see what I see? ...do you see what I see?..."


Text continues: And so 'reform', as many choose to call it, is merely change painted in the disguise of improvement. 'Reform' implies benefit, along with advantage, and must, and should, and required. But reform, in any guise is particularly subjective. The need for it being debatable, the implications uncertain.

But here again we are struck with the paradox.

Nothing stays the same forever.

Audio: "I know it's true but I just can't say it..(say it, say it).. I know it's true but I just can't say it..(say it, say it).."

But afraid of change as we are, it is obsessively attractive. Typically our belligerence characteristically finds fault in everyday events. Either it's something that doesn't work or someone we don't like. A responsibility we'd like to have or something we'd like to get rid of. We daydream solutions to ease the frustration and we depict in our minds that glorious path that will deliver a remedy.

Change is like flypaper.

Audio: "…I'm still here.. I'm still a fool for the Holy Grail.."

In business, change is like a leering, grinning Cheshire cat. Managers often preside over successfully led transitions with a level of self-indulgent satisfaction that can blind them to its shortcomings. For some, it can be habit forming, occurring for its own sake, justified as progressive but in reality traumatic, unsettling and unpredictable.
The resulting debate is interpreted by the initiators of change as resistance and deliberately ignored, argued as being futile. And then we are harshly judged by how easily we submit.

Audio: Thumping bass and drums. Saxophone and vocal chorus


Audio : "...YOU-don't-make-me-feel.. like-I'm-a-women ...anymore.."


Change, therefore, is about obedience. The submission of self to the inevitability of fate where change is disturbing and frequent. It can be clumsy and inept but it is often tragic and unexpected. It leaves in its wake the defiant, the stubborn, the obstinate and the stupid, somehow left out in the open, (euphemistically) strewn about like muddled, confused piles of straw in no particular order. A very special kind of horror.

But doesn't it say somewhere that what doesn't kill can only make you stronger?

Bullshit.
 

Change has nothing to do with strength or endurance or character.

It's about compliance.

Audio: "So Good bye,.. (say-goodbye).. Good bye-my-little-lovely... (say-goodbye).. as we turn...as we turn down the lights.. (say-goodbye).. Say Goodbye...(say-goodbye)...goodbye-to-the-naked truth..your-skin-is-looking-weary and-your-eyes-are-closing-down-on-the-day"


 
'Say Goodbye'& 'Do You See What I See' - Hunters and Collectors. From the album 'Under One Roof' 1998