"Now how to translate "Herd of Turquoise Hookahs" so that it makes sense ?
Well, I guess it doesn't.
It was loosely based on a song lyric by Syd Barrett from the song "bike". In it, he sings "I've got a clan of gingerbreadmen".
Somehow, someway, some many years ago that got turned into “a herd of turquoise hookahs" in my head by some process which would be hard to explain.
Impossible to explain really.
Maybe it's a variation on the idea of things in groups having strange collective names, like "a murder of crows" etc.
But in my mind, I see row upon row of those elegant machines glistening in formation over the prairie --
languorously spilling out their decadent exhaust to confound and mesmerize the onlooker :
great clouds, great smoke signals, great balls of fire, great comfortable blankets of fog.
Food for the lotus-eaters."
Steven Schayer
(from The Velvet Sonic Painters of the Bloody Apartments - 2007)
