Chord transcription by Cameron Taylor
<camtaylor@techemail.com>
and Maxim Koutskevitch <vegetatio@hotmail.com>,
3.05.1998
corrections welcome !
You can listen MIRROR IMAGES on Peter Hammill's "pH7" (1978) and Van der Graaf 's "Vital Live" (1978). For my ear the song is performed in different tonalities on these two albums - on "pH7" Hammill took a half-tone higher and that harmony sequence not so easy to play guitar. The Vital-transposition I'm noting is more comfort for guitar accompaniment.
[struct. 1]
Dm A Dm A
If I'm the mirror and you're the image
Dm G Dm A
then what's the secret between the two,
Dm A Dm G
these 'me's and 'you's, how many can there be?
C G
Oh, I don't mind all that around the place,
C F Esus4 E
as long as you keep it well away from me.
[ struct. 1 ]
I've begun to regret that we ever met
between the dimensions.
It gets such a strain to pretend that the change
is anything but cheap...
with your infant pique and your angst pretensions
sometimes you act like a creep.
[struct. 2]
Am G
And now I'm standing in the corner, looking at the room and the furniture
Dm F Esus4
in cheap imitation of alienation and grief.
Am G
And now we're going to the kitchen, fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
Dm F Esus4 E
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.
[struct. 1]
Still, I reflect, this nervous wreck
who stands before me can see as well,
can surely tell that he's not yet free;
he can turn aside, but can no more ignore me
F E
than know which one of us is he,
F E
than tell what we are going to be,
F E
than know which one of us is me.
[struct. 2]
And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.
[coda of pH7-version ]
Esus4 E
These mirror images,
Esus4 E
these mirror images
Dsus4
won't stay, these mirror images
Csus4
go away, these mirror images
Bsus4 A
are no help. In these mirror images of myself
Dm A Dm G
there are no secrets.