Godsong

This week we've been listening to gospel which is ecstatic, passionate music- it really is- and also awful, life-sucking music. Perhaps I've allowed Nietzschean pessimism about the God business to influence me too deeply. Well, we'll see shortly.

Throughout the country and gospel canon (and the more ancient Christian hymnal canon) there is a preoccupation with the idea that "this world is not our home." This is not merely a motif. It is a powerful longing for the sweet chariot of death to come down and take us away. And this is the sort of theme that as often as not carries the ecstasy of the music. It kind of makes everything about the music bittersweet- is there anything more heartbreaking than that the great religious soul of the American South should be a hatred of this world and a longing for death?

People need to believe in something, but if believing in God makes them reject this world, than I reject God. Don't worry Dubov-sky, you didn't drive me to Atheism. Atheism is a ditch outside of town I drove myself to last summer. Anyway, I wrote a song about how I felt this week. Lyrics, as always, are hard to write and these are the best I could do for now. Check in soon to see if I've got a more permanent solution.

Godsong

I’m not one to pray for rain

Or make the world in seven days

But look out for me

I’ll be hanging around

Dreams they grow they laugh they play

Then they die and they decay

Better not to leave them

Lying round the house

Things might start a-growing

That'd gross you out

God was such a dream for me,

God fit me so beautifully

Sometimes I wish God was still

Hanging around

Sometimes I wish God were

Hanging around

But boundless goodness tied

To a boundless cruelty

Doesn’t make even a little

Sense to me

This world is my mother and my home

The better world’s awaiting 

In your bones

I have seen some awful things

Inconceivable the responsibility

That someone like god

Would have to hold

Such a complex character

I don’t know…

I’ve been so angry

Don’t give me that Book of Job soliloquy

Not everything is part

Of a plan

Sometimes there is really

Not a plan

And I just don’t believe

That a divine intelligence

Would name itself lord

Neither god’s nor master’s anymore

Faithless whether rain or shine

Rich or poor

Alone I’ve coped with all I’ve known

Alone I’ve built shrines out of bones

They’ll stand till I am dust

And then who knows?

The gentleness of dust

Will be my home