21. 10 Elemental Songs

Helium Hearts - Super Furry Animals
Oxygen - Willie Mason
Gold - Spandau Ballet
Iron Lion Zion - Bob Marley & the Wailers
Lithium -Nirvana
Fire - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem
Carbon Dioxide - Regina Spektor
Solid Air - John Martyn
Fire and Rain - James Taylor

Bit of a cheat this one, as I've clearly drawn on different interpretations of what elements are to create this. I'm really thinking about the Four Original Elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, hence the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and his like, but I couldn't resist a few songs with a chemical element feel. So we end up with a bit of an unhappy compromise.
I think, ahem, it was, was it not, DH, was it not DH Lawrence who said

Why don't people leave off being lovable
Or thinking they are lovable, or wanting to be lovable,
and be a bit elemental instead?

Since man is made up of the elements,
Fire, and rain, and air, and live loam
And none of these is lovable
but elemental,
Man is lop-sided on the side of the angels.

I wish man would get back their balance among the elements
And be a bit more fiery, as incapable of telling lies
as fire is.
I wish man would be true to their own variation, as water is,
which goes through all the stages of steam and stream and ice
Without losing its head.

I am sick of lovable people.
Somehow they are a lie.

Not my words, not my words, ladies and gentlemen, but the words of one DH Lawrence. Fine words, fine words. Was it not Bob, was it not one Bob Dylan, who sang of his mythical love that "she doesn't have to say she's faithful, but she's true like ice, like fire". That's pretty true.

So, elemental? But how hard it is to be elemental, now we've learnt so thoroughly not to be.
And how hard to be at one with nature, when we have barely no contact with anything that is not in some way manufactured.

The only thing elemental about me is my god damn rhyming scheme

I'm no longer in the elements
I no longer smell the air
and the wind brings me no sorrows
and the rain brings me no care
And the elements have no power
to twist fortune everywhere
And the stars do not redeem me
They may as well not be there

Jesus hides not in my details
there's no spirit in my charts
I'm a careless statistician
no sharp master of the arts
Christ bears me not on his shoulders
when the darkness shrouds my heart
In the bargain with my demons
I look after my own part.

There's no charity in my pupils
I'll neither give nor take away
I'll no guilt feel for my hardness
I grew tired to live that way
There's no debit on my statements,
no debt conscience bids me pay
Horror brings just mild discomfort
Genocide makes no dismay

I'm no longer with the living
in the senses I ought to be
Passions weight not on my footsteps,
but a distant memory
I no longer fear the elements,
Nothing means a thing to me.
Storm is over, sun is sunken,
Of all feeling, I am free.