Vibrating Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

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Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 127 times, most recently at Robyn & Emma's house on October 03, 2025. He first performed it at MTV on April 03, 1988, 37 years and 6 months earlier.

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"This is a celebration of the sensuality of pure being." - Black Cat, 2016

From Robyn on Patreon in 2025
This song oozed into being between New York City and the Isle of Wight, over the now-golden year of 1986/87.

Verse 1 appeared to me in a very small box of a hotel room on 8th Avenue, one October sunset, as the Egyptians and I commenced our third US tour. The orange rays of sunlight etched themselves deep into the cheap wallpaper, pushing my indigo shadow up towards the ceiling. In the midst of a pre-cell phone, pre-internet album campaign that was frenzied and utterly un-Zen, I caught a Flash of the Moment: all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable, as the maestro T.S. Eliot once observed, all time is homing in on you now, motherfucker, as Sabrina Carpenter might have added, had she been brought in to collaborate on “Four Quartets”.

A few months later, I was driving a damp, heater-free VW micro-bus through the January wasteland of Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight. I was alone and un-euphoric. The buzz and momentum of touring the USA had been eradicated by the seeping nothingness of life in a British seaside town in winter. Nonetheless, the beat went on: I could picture the pulse of Pure Being continuing in some mould-soaked shed in a derelict back garden where even a tadpole might seem like a luxury item: especially if it actually grew into a frog. That shed would have to be curated by a top-drawer demon, of course: intensity is all.

I parked the VW van without knocking into any other vehicles: always an achievement for me in my brief time as a motorist. Cones were in short supply back then. Verse 3 of “Vibrating” duly appeared in one of my long-destroyed notebooks, written down in a dismal coffee joint that is now dust along with my notes themselves.

And the middle verse? Lately, I’ve been delving into old multi-track tapes from the Globe of Frogs recording sessions, and discovered some alternative lyrics for Verse 2, sung in my voice of the day. Most likely from the Isle rather than NYC, the words I sing here are one of these outtakes.

It’s all in the pursuit of Istigkeit, filtered through my amphibian libido. Gotta rock, gotta roll, gotta free my soul. Gotta vibrate internally until Now and Eternity meet up and go home together, arm in arm…

Lyrics

Cross-legged on the bed
She gazed across the town
Her shadow climbed the wall
Until the sun went down

She bought a china pug
It lay there on the bed
And in the paper bag
She could just see its head

She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating

In an adoring pose
He shriveled up and died
Until his bones were stems
Upon the grass they dried

And made an alphabet
Of white upon the green
And it was beautiful
And some would say obscene

She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating

And in the demon's hut
Discolored flowers grew
And they had fleshy stems
And fleshy petals, too

To slither is sublime
To multifoliate
She just lost her watch
She couldn't concentrate

She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating
She was vibrating