www.simoncollier.ca

It seems like nothing ever changes. Not really. When I listened to the lyrics of “Nothing Ever Happens” by Del Amitri, it could easily have been written today, rather than 16 years ago.

It might say something else to you, but to me it reminds me that we so often miss the point of what’s going on in the world. We allow bad things to happen without saying a word (we all sing along like before), but get ourselves worked up about silly little things in life (too many repeats on TV). It’s funny what we speak up about, and what other things we obediently or dismissively follow along with.

Every day, we go through the motions of what we think our daily lives should be – we cross the road where the white lines say we can, we call up some friends to drink and numb the pains of the world (or distract from them) , we worry about getting to a meeting in time, sometimes to the point we rush through traffic and put our lives at risk.

Meanwhile, people die every second for no good reason; wars are fought so we can drive to work using cars with old petrol-burning technology; children work longer and harder than we do so that we can buy our clothes for a few dollars less; the world is destroyed gradually and carelessly so we can get cheap lumber, or grow cash crops; the air we breath becomes more and more polluted because we need that oil so desperately, or don’t want to invest in clean power.

But we continue to care about meeting that artificial deadline at work, we still stop at the stop sign when we can see nothing is coming, we persist in becoming irate at a Donahue show… and we keep pretending that our lives really matter, or that we are not personally at fault for all of this.
“Nothing Ever Happens”
- Del Amitri

Post office clerks put up signs saying position closed
And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats
Janitors padlock the gates
For security guards to patrol
And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink
While the married ones turn on a chat show

And they’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Gentlemen time please, you know we can’t serve anymore
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there’s nothing to go
And by five o’clock everything’s dead
And every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds
Like the doped white mice in the college lab

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Telephone exchanges click while there’s nobody there
The martians could land in the carpark and no one would care
Close-circuit cameras in department stores shoot the same video every day
And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed
Just survive constant action replay

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
While angry from manchester writes to complain about
All the repeats on t.v.
And computer terminals report some gains
On the values of copper and tin
While american businessmen snap up van goghs
For the price of a hospital wing

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before
Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
They’ll burn down the synagogues at six o’clock
And we’ll all go along like before

And we’ll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow