I've been playing TED for nearly a decade and I've very rarely played any new songs of my own. And that was largely because there weren't any.(Laughter)

我已在TED演奏了将近十年,可是我几乎很少演奏自己的新歌。主要原因是,根本就没有。

So I've been busy with a couple of projects, and one of them was this, the Nutmeg, a 1930s ship's lifeboat, which I've been restoring in the garden of my beach house in England. And, so now, when the polar ice caps melt, my recording studio will rise up like an ark, and I'll float off into the drowned world like a character from a J.G. Ballard novel. During the day, the Nutmeg collects energy from solar panels on the roof of the wheelhouse, and from a 450-watt turbine up the mast. So when it gets dark, I've got plenty of power. And I can light up the Nutmeg like a beacon. And so I go in there until the early hours of the morning. And I work on new songs. I'd like to play to you guys, if you're willing to be the first audience to hear it.(Applause)

我一直在忙于几个项目,其中一个,叫做“肉豆蔻”(植物名)-- 一艘20世纪30年代的救生艇。我把它停放在我那英格兰的海滩别墅一个后花园里。要是现在北极的冰川融化,我的这艘录音室就会浮起来有如诺亚方舟,在这个淹没的世界里漂向远方,就像英国作家 J·G·巴拉德小说里的角色一样。白天,“肉豆蔻”可以通过舵手室里的太阳能电池板,收集太阳能,和桅杆上一个450瓦特的涡轮机。那么当夜幕降临,我就有足够的电力照明,点亮照明灯,在黑暗中仿佛灯塔。我便待在里面创作直到天明。我已经完成几首新歌,如果你们愿意成为第一批听众,我将非常乐意演奏。

It's about Billie Holiday. And it appears that, some night in 1947, she left her physical space and was missing all night, until she reappeared in the morning. But I know where she was. She was with me on my life boat. And she was hot.(laughter)

是关于比利霍利迪(爵士乐坛的天后级巨星)的。当时有传说,1974年的某个夜晚,她离开那个时空,消失了一整晚,直到第二天早晨又再度出现。不过我知道她去了哪里,其实她和我一起在这艘方舟,她很火辣。


大致歌词:

Billie crept softly

into my waking arms

warm like a sip of sour mash

Strange, fruitful

a sweet hunk of trash

Panic at the stage door

for Carnegie Hall

Famous jazz singer gone AWOL

Must have left the building

body and soul

On a creaky

piano stool tonight

'cause the moon is my

only witness

She was breathing

in my ear

This time it's love

But love is a loaded pistol

By daybreak she's gone

Over the frozen river, home

Me and Johnny Walker

See in the new age

alone

Stay with me

again tonight

Billie, time,

time is a wily trickster

Still an echo

in my heart says,

This time it's love