Alan Watts
I Don’t Know What It’s About
Here is Jan van Eyck
Who paints the eschatological picture of the Last Judgement
What a strange man he must have been
Here is heaven above and hell below
And in heaven, here‘s God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, all that together, and Virgin Mary and the Apostles
And they're all sitting in committee
And they have an aisle like in church, and there they are facing each other
And they're all sitting there very solemnly, and I don't know what it's about
[Chorus]
I don't know what it's about
I don't know what it's about
But below, right at the end of the aisle, you see where all these Apostles are sitting is Saint Michael
A rather gorgeous figure in beautiful armor with wings
And underneath him is a batwing skull, and beneath those bat wings all horror is let loose
Michael is about to slosh that skull, you see, with his sword
But below, whoo! There are n*** bodies, some of them pretty comely
They're all squirming in there and they're being eaten by worms
[Chorus]
I don't know what it's about
I don't know what it's about
And they're eating the worms, and there's kind of a mush, it's like the sort of situation you find when you turn up a big rock
There's all that going on underneath
Now there is no question whatever that van Eyck, the painter, had more fun painting that part of the picture than he did painting the top part
So, in the same way with Hieronymus Bosch, and with Bruegel, they painted every kind of weird, surrealistic deviltry going on
And they really loved it
But they couldn’t admit it
[Chorus]
I don't know what it's about
I don't know what it's about
[Chorus]
I don't know what it's about
I don't know what it's about