The Speed of Things Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

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Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 71 times, most recently at Robyn & Emma's house on September 22, 2025. He first performed it at Tipitina's on June 29, 1992, 33 years and 2 months earlier.

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From Robyn on Patreon in 2023
My father Raymond passed away 31 years ago; my daughter Maisie followed him two months back. Life flows into us, through us, and out again - we are never at rest. We’re not statues or photographs, more like movies that show just once. We have only a lease on life, we can never own it. Yes, you knew this already, and so did I - but I have to remind myself every so often.

I wrote this song in the Isle of Wight, on a piece of lined paper that I found in my pocket one chilly April afternoon a few weeks after Raymond’s death. I’d been walking off a remorseless hangover, and found myself standing in a disused army barracks on the north-west coast, watching the sun creep down towards the mainland. Life seemed like an electrical impulse travelling through a series of lightbulbs, as in a fairground or outside a theatre. It kindles each bulb for a moment and moves on. My hangover had reached the tea-time horrors phase - a kind of negative existential epiphany that was effectively a panic attack. I became acutely aware of each moment as I passed through it, before it was discarded. Gosh, didn’t we have fun back then?

I walked back home and before going out to the pub again I took the lyrics I’d just written and put them on the pale green Formica kitchen table. The tune that came to me was a kind of hybrid of traditional British folk melodies, and seemed to fit just fine. I still have the cassette, but I no longer have that particular beatbox - which is a pity: it was a solid machine.

So it goes…

Lyrics

All in the terror of the moment
That pounces as it open swings
A line of dots illuminated
For I have seen the speed of things

I fed you in your chair this morning
You made a mess of everything
By afternoon, you drove a sports car
You were driving at the speed of things

You held my hand when I was crying
You were allergic to bee stings
I threw some earth onto your coffin
And thought about the speed of things

I kissed you by the clear, cold river
I felt like I was growing wings
But I grew horns and found another
Oh, a girl to share the speed of things
Oh, a girl to share the speed of things

All in the terror of the moment
That pounces as it open swings
A line of dots illuminated
For I have seen the speed of things