The City Veins

Does “Wednesday Word Days” sound better? I don’t think so. “Word Days” sounds kind of stupid. But anyway…

There have been several requests–mostly from my mom–to print our lyrics out so people could read them and understand where we are coming from. As a recurring series I will now type up our lyrics with a brief explanation of where they are derived from, so, to turn an Obama phrase, you may see a reflection of our very worst selves.

The lyrics were inspired by the novel “Child of God” by Cormac McCarthy. The novel tells the story of Lester Ballard, a painfully simple-minded man living in Appalachia. The song was originally entitled “The Ballad of Lester Ballard”, but that was decidedly too cumbersome.

Lester Ballard is a violent individual, and the short, choppie, violent sentences of the novel reflect that, “like blood or muddy footprints on the clean white snow“. I tried to capture that same feeling with short lines that set both the scene of cold and desolation, as well as some violent language. There is a strong sense of nature in McCarthy’s work, so I began by trying to describe events in terms of nature.

It seems to me that the point of “Child of God” is two-fold. In one instance it serves as a juxtposition; that supposedly every man is a child of god, pure, but Lester Ballard seems the furthest from that. It grates on the believer to think that this man could be a child of god like the rest of us, and that makes him appear all the more abhorrent. The second is to show us how those who are born into purity can–through choice and circumstance–shed that purity for evil. In many respects Lester is a victim of his environment, his lack of education, and his poverty. But he is guilty of operating on the most basic of human instincts without the benefit of socialized reason. Lester, like every man, can stand or fall on moral ground. Those are the two paths available to us from birth, the moment in which he was the pure Child of God. The line “you’re turning coat” reflects his choice to switch sides; to become the opposite of what we think a Child of God to be.

The song revolves around the most horrific event of the book. I will leave it to you to find out what that is.

Freedom After the Fall

One day in the fall
The dead are now in bloom
She’s glassy in the eyes
And spread across the room
He stood as high as law
But on the softest ground
To take the coldest girls
To spin their heads around

You’re a picture of our uncertainty
Man can stand or fall, hard upon his knees
If you don’t want to tell them, oh then they don’t want to know
You’re turning Coat

You’re a menace, you should really go
You’re a child of god, your hands around a throat
If you don’t want to tell them, oh, then they don’t want to know
You’re turning coat