¡Viva Cristo Rey! - British Style

Tomorrow is the Solemnity of Christ the King, instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  Coming on the final Sunday of the liturgical year, it is a reminder that, at the end of time, Christ will return to judge the living and the dead.  It's a nice segue into Advent, when we will reflect on both Jesus's first coming as a baby and His second coming in glory.

The feast also reminds us that Jesus Christ is sovereign over all things.  All people and nations, all rulers and governments are ultimately under His authority.

This solemnity was instituted partly in reaction to contemporary events in Mexico, where an anti-Catholic government had come to power in the Mexican Revolution.  When a new set of anti-Catholic laws were passed in 1926, Catholics - known as Cristeros - took up arms against the government, adopting as their battle cry the phrase, "¡Viva Cristo Rey!": Long live Christ the King.

Our family's favorite hymn, "Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending," is one appropriate for Advent or for tomorrow's solemnity.  The text, which comes in a few variations, is by Charles Wesley:

Lo! He comes, with clouds descending,
once for our salvation slain;
thousand thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of His train.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Christ the Lord returns to reign!

Ev'ry eye shall now behold Him,
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at naught and sold Him,
pierced, and nailed Him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
shall the true Messiah see. 

Those dear tokens of His passion
still His dazzling body bears;
cause of endless exultation
to His ransomed worshippers;
with what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
waze we on those glorious scars! 

Yea, amen! Let all adore Thee,
high on Thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the pow'r and glory,
claim the kingdom for Thine own:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou shalt reign and thou alone.

Here it is sung by the choristers of Lichfield Cathedral in the North-West Midlands of England:

Happy Feast of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr!

O God,

Who crowned the innocence and holiness

of the virgin Cecilia

with the wreath of heroic martyrdom

and consoled her with the songs of angels:

set us aflame with divine love,

give us perseverance amidst persecution,

and grant that we may send our prayers

heavenward on winged notes of praise.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Today's image comes from the Polet Chapel in Rome.

Remembering 9/11: Tom Paxton's "The Bravest"

This song needs no preface.

What Does Auld Lang Syne Mean?

Most Americans know at least the opening line of Robert Burn's poem "Auld Lang Syne," set to a Scottish folk tune which is at once melancholy and joyous. It doesn't take a linguist to realize that "auld" is simply "old" in Burns' Scottish dialect. But beyond the initial question - "Should auld acquaintance be forgot / and never brought to mind?" - most Americans' knowledge of the lyrics gets rather fuzzy, to say nothing of additional Scottish oddities. 

Perhaps most puzzling are the title words themselves: auld lang syne?  I'm no expert, but I'm told that "lang" means "long" - no big surprise there - and "syne" means "since."  As sometimes occurs in Latin or certain English texts, the noun involved is omitted, but can be inferred: old [things] long since [gone].  Or, more poetically, we might translate it as something like "times long gone."

Below is the full text, with glosses on some of the other words likely to befuddle modern singers.


Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo [dear],
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be [buy] your pint-stoup [cup]!
and surely I'll be [buy] mine!
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa [two] hae [have] run about the braes * [slopes],
and pou'd [picked] the gowans [daisies] fine;
But we've wander'd mony [many] a weary fit [foot],
sin' [since] auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa [two] hae [have] paidl'd [paddled] in the burn [stream],
frae [from] morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid [broad] hae [have] roar'd
sin' [since] auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere [friend]!
and gie's [give me] a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie [goodwill] waught [draught],
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS


* You may know this term from the opening line of The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond.

The Godhead See

My favorite lines from any hymn come from "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing": Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see / Hail the incarnate Deity.

The King's College Chapel choir sings an excellent rendition of the hymn below (as does the St. Paul's Choir), but I think the hymn is best done with more gusto and strong instrumentation.  This is not simply a sweet song about a little baby; it is a triumphal anthem celebrating our encounter with the King of Kings.



St. John Chrysostom echoes - or, rather, anticipates - the lyrics written by Charles Wesley.  In his Christmas sermon, he nearly sings, "All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now for our redemption dwells here below; and he that was lowly is by divine mercy raised."

St. John draws our attention to the wonder that, with the Incarnation, a small corner of creation holds the creator Himself: "Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side, the Sun of Justice....  The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant's bands." 

For us whose nature He took on, this is nothing short of astonishing.  "The Only Begotten, Who is before all ages, Who cannot be touched or be perceived, Who is simple, without body, has now put on my body, that is visible and liable to corruption. For what reason? That coming amongst us He may teach us, and teaching, lead us by the hand to the things that men cannot see."

If being created in the divine image did not already convey our inestimable dignity, the birth of Jesus now implies an even greater dignity.  "For it was to Him no lowering to put on what He Himself had made. Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its own Creator."

In the same oratorical style seen in his Easter sermon, St. John rises to a crescendo: "Come, then, let us observe the Feast....  For this day the ancient slavery is ended, the devil confounded, the demons take to flight, the power of death is broken, paradise is unlocked, the curse is taken away, sin is removed from us, error driven out, truth has been brought back, the speech of kindliness diffused, and spreads on every side, a heavenly way of life has been planted on the earth, angels communicate with men without fear, and men now hold speech with angels. "

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This year, to supply you with Irish music on the one day of the year when it is on demand, I will show you a few videos that illustrate the influence America has played on traditional Irish music today.

Most of the earliest commercial recordings were actually made in America by Irish immigrants. Perhaps the most famous of these musicians was Michael Coleman, a fiddler born in Killavil, Co. Sligo who came to New York City in 1914. He soon found work as a professional player in vaudeville shows, and picked up many tunes that he recorded in a traditional style but to our ears today sound unmistakably like rag-time. Many of Coleman's records were sent back to Ireland, where young musicians were so enthralled that they copied his music note for note. Even today, musicians throughout the Irish diaspora will play sets that were first popularized  by Coleman.

One of those sets is of two reels: Bonnie Kate & Jenny's Chickens:



But, he could also play more graceful waltzes popular with the American crowds he played for:




Coleman's influence on the world of Irish music was so strong, not just because of his records, but also because of the fiddlers he taught. One of the most prominent of those students was Andy McGann, who recorded a number of albums in the 1970's, and who has a remarkably similar style as Coleman:



And that New York-Sligo fiddle style is still alive today, particularly in the playing of Brian Conway, who is shown here doing his own rendition of Bonnie Kate & Jenny's Chickens (with a third reel added to the set):



Another well-known musician who emigrated to New York around the same time was the Leitrim-born flute player John McKenna, who also recorded in the 1920's and 1930's. Here he is playing a polka with a distinct American flavor, "Tripping to the Well."




Finally, this old-time, rag-time-influenced style of Irish music has been making a comeback in recent years, after being going underground for a while in the folk revival of the 1970's. One of the positive aspects of this comeback (in my opinion) is that musicians are starting to dust off a lot of the old polkas and barndances that were nearly forgotten in the 1970's when a lot of bands pumped out only reels and jigs. A little rhythmic variety never hurt anybody!

Here is one new band, Morga, who can put on a great show (as I saw in Chicago last summer), playing a polka from the Roaring Twenties called "Fitzmaurice's Flight":

St. Augustine on Music

I have recently been reading through a delightful little volume titled Augustine Day by Day (hence the recent post from his Confessions).  One of the joys found in reading these daily selections is that you start to notice certain recurrent themes and topics, such as these passages on music:

Dear friends, sing the Psalm with human reason, not like birds.  Thrushes, parrots, ravens, magpies, and the like are often taught to say what they do not understand.  However, to know what we are saying was granted by God's will to human nature.  Hence, we who have learned in the Church to sing God's words should be eager to do so.  We should know and see with a clear mind what we have all sung together with one voice. (Commentary on Psalm 18, 2) 

Indeed, Lord, the days were not long enough as I found wonderful delight in meditating upon the depth of Your design for the salvation of the human race.  I wept at the beauty of Your hymns, and I was powerfully moved at the sweet sound of Your Church's singing.  Those sounds flowed into my ears, and the truth streamed into my heart.  My feeling of devotion overflowed, and the tears ran from my eyes, and I was happy in them. (Confessions IX, 6)

Today's icon of St. Augustine comes from Monastery Icons.

St. Patrick's Day

This year in honor of St. Patrick's Day, a few polkas.

Most people would be surprised to learn that the Irish dance polkas, but it's true. In the middle of the 19th century, a polka craze swept through Europe, starting in central Europe and going all over the world--for instance, German settlers brought the style to Texas, where Mexicans adapted it until it became Norteno/Tejano music. Polkas were brought to Ireland at the same time, but until recently the polka craze was generally confined to two small regions within Ireland. The first region was Sliabh Luachra, the hill country along the River Blackwater on the border of Cork and Kerry. In Sliabh Luachra, the style of polka played there is very fast and very syncopated and obviously meant for crossroads dancing. There the fiddle and button accordion were the primary instruments for dance music and still are today. The first clip features two well-known Sliabh Luachra musicians playing a set of polkas: Jackie Daly on accordion and Seamus Creagh on fiddle. Notice how on the first tune Jackie Daly plays an octave lower the second time through.

 

Here is a link to another set of polkas (the video could not be embedded), played by another fine fiddle-accordion duet from Sliabh Luachra: Matt Cranitch and Donal Murphy.

The other region where polkas were played was in the northwest around Sligo. There the style is slower and less syncopated and a bit more graceful. There the fiddle is also popular, but the flute is more common than the accordion. The following video features Matt Molloy, from Ballaghadereen on the Roscommon-Mayo border, playing flute and on fiddle John Carty, who was born in London but whose family hails from Sligo. The second tune they play is called "The Killavil Postman"; Killavil is the village in Sligo where the famous fiddler Michael Coleman was born. The set of polka begins at about 3:30, with "The Killavil Postman"
 starting at about 4:38.

 

Weird Folk Music

Bob Dylan said in a 1965 interview about folk music: "It's weird, man, full of legend, myth, Bible and ghosts."

Sometimes, the legends can be traced to actual historical events. One example is the Appalachian murder ballad "Omie Wise," which tells the story of a pregnant girl who was drowned by her lover in North Carolina.

The legends, however, can also be less historical and more mythical. One song that is common to Scotland, Ireland, and the Appalachians, under various names, is "The House Carpenter." All the versions of the song tell of a man who comes back from nine months at sea to find his love married to a house carpenter and caring for a child. He then takes her out on his ship where he sinks the ship, killing the woman and her child.



This tale of jealousy, however, takes on more sinister overtones in the Scottish version of the song, which is called "The Demon Lover." In this variant, the woman does not discover until it is too late that her former lover has a cloven hoof. It is then that the demon lover decides to drown her. (The Irish version, as recorded by Dervish, is known as "The Banks of the Sweet Viledee.")



Even more disturbing than the murder ballads are those involving incest. One such song is "The Well below the Valley." The beginning of the song alludes to Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. However, instead of revealing the woman's multiple adulterous relationships, the stranger at the well reveals that she has murdered six babies she had through incest.

Finally, one reason for the weirdness of certain folk songs is the simple fact that certain words have been lost and the story line has become obscure. For instance, the following version of "Heathery Hills of Yarrow" (also known as the "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow") was sung by Micheal O'Domhnaill in the 1970's, and later by his sister Triona Ni Dhomhnaill on the Bothy Band's Afterhours; it tells the story of the murder of a woman's lover, but the exact motive is not clear, as it appears to be missing some verses that explain the context.

Hauschka's One-Man Ensemble

Volker Bertelmann - aka "Hauschka" - has jury-rigged his piano to produce a wide variety of sounds, allowing him to play what sound like a swelling ensemble. Quite impressive.




H/T to Nathan for bringing this video to my attention.

Advent Music

We don't hear much about Advent at this time of year. Once Thanksgiving passes, we pass over Advent in the rush to get to Christmas. We have forgotten that we must first patiently wait and ask for God's grace to prepare for the birth of Jesus.

One result of forgetting to live Advent is that we start listening to Christmas songs well before Christmas. But, if you want to hear some actual Advent music that expresses the Church's longing for the coming of the Savior, there is some out there. This week I discovered this setting by Bach (BWV 62/1) of Martin Luther's chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, which is a German translation of Veni, Redemptor Gentium, a much older hymn traditionally attributed to St. Ambrose of Milan.



The videos for the remaining movements can be seen here.

Finally, today begins the singing at vespers of the so-called O antiphons.

Happy Constitution Day!

Yes, yes, I know the actual holiday was on Friday, but this evening will be the annual celebration at the University of Dallas. The evening features barbecue, Shiner, a patriotic address and then singing. Lots of singing. The measure of a good Constitution Day is if you leave hoarse. In honor of this fine festival, I share a few of my favorites.

The evening begins with songs of the Revolution and the early Republic, then moves to Confederate songs and finally to those of the Civil War's victors.



(For those of you reading this on Facebook, click here for the YouTube video of "The Bonnie Blue Flag".)

One of the great things about the lyrics to this song are the strange rhymes in later verses. Words like "mar" rhyme with the recurring "star", but "rare" or "prefer"? I'm afraid not. At one point "Florida" is stuck in there, making no attempt at all to continue the rhyme. There are other fun ones: I guess "given" rhymes with "eleven", but it still sounds funny when you sing it.




(Click here for the YouTube, if you can't see the video.)

This songs works best with periodic shouting. The most popular lines for this practice are not the obvious "shouting the battle cry of freedom", since it occurs far too often, twice in every verse. Instead, the best words to shout are usually the last words of the third line of every verse. This works particularly well with "[singing] And although he may be poor, he will [shouting] never be a slave!" The song is made even more boisterous by a great sweeping of fists into the air every time the line "up with the star" occurs. I highly recommend it.




(Click here for video.)

This is a slightly odd video of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," containing rare color footage of World War II. Also, strangely enough, the song is performed by Russia's Red Army Choir. But I found that this rendition had adequate "We're going to whip the bad guys!" gusto, which other versions (such as that by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) lacked.

Happy Constitution Day!

Lord Franklin

Aaron's post yesterday about the fabled Northwest Passage, and Stan Rogers' song about it, brought to my mind a common folk song about one of the men who went searching for it: Sir John Franklin.

Lord Franklin set sail from England on May 19, 1845. After sailing past Greenland, they become ice-bound somewhere past Baffin Bay. None of the crew, including Lord Franklin, was seen alive again. A note, however, was later found on Beechey Island, stating that Lord Franklin died on June 11, 1847.

After no word after a couple of years, a search party was sent out, but none of the crew--besides a few graves--was found. The mystery surrounding the voyage to the Northwest Passage captured the public's imagination, and within a few years an anonymous musician wrote a song about it, describing the fear that Lady Franklin must have felt waiting for news about her husband.

The first version of this song comes from the English folk-rock band Pentangle, which at the time featured two superb guitarists: John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Their version of this song contains a very restrained, and very tasteful, guitar solo.



The second version comes from Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, the late Irish singer best known for his work with the Bothy Band. He was (I have heard) a great admirer of Renbourn and Jansch's work with Pentangle, and I suspect it was the above version that inspired him to do something unusual for him: sing in English. He recorded it with fiddler Kevin Burke on their 1979 duet album Promenade.

Northwest Passage - Annotated

Early this spring I woke up with the chorus to Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage" rolling through my head. In that state of semi-consciousness I must have mumbled my way through it at least a half dozen times before I realized what was going on. When a song has weaseled its way that far into your psyche, an annotated edition is in order...



Chorus:
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Chorus

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

Chorus

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

Chorus

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Chorus


Hat tip to Mike and his Sea of Flowers blog, which untangled the mystery of that phrase and its relation to "Brave Kelso." Alas, it would seem Kelsey never wrote the line "sea of flowers," instead describing the prairie as a bleak place. The kind of language Rogers employs is more reminicent of William Cullen Bryant, who in "The Prairie" described the plains "In airy undulations, far away, / As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, / Stood still, with an his rounded billows fixed".

Rejoicing Correctly

One of the oddities of Aristotle's Politics--at least for the modern reader--is that it ends with a somewhat lengthy discussion of music, which would have been even lengthier if the complete work had come down to us. But when we remember that Aristotle was a student of Plato, who taught that "the ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city," we will begin to see why Aristotle placed so much importance on the role of music in the polis.

Aristotle, like his teacher, recognizes that music has a profound power. But what is this power good for? Aristotle rejects the idea that music should be a mere amusement like "sleep and deep drinking" (Bk. VIII.iv.3;1339a17), or even that it should be an intellectual entertainment for the cultured (1339a25). Instead, he emphasizes its formative influence on the soul, and its ability to help the young develop virtue.

But, virtue sounds boring, and it also sounds like hard work--which Aristotle admits, when he calls education in virtue a "painful process" (μετὰ λύπης γὰρ ἡ μάθησις). So, why regulate music in what is bound to be a painful process for the young?

Aristotle's answer is simple, but profound: Music must be regulated so that the young can learn to "rejoice correctly" (χαίρειν ὀρθῶς). Good music helps the young to govern their emotions, and to attain happiness. In a later part of the discussion, Aristotle repeats this very same phrase phrase, and then adds two more emotions that need to be learned correctly: love and hatred (1340a15).

So, why should we pay attention to what kind of music we listen to? So that we can love, hate, and rejoice correctly.

Mumford & Sons - The Cave

This song - and the accompanying video - by Mumford & Sons first came to my attention when one of my housemates had a kind of binge, playing it over and over. My first comments were of gentle mockery for his obsession, but I have come rather to enjoy it. Was that an allusion to Book XII of the Odyssey (and do I catch some Republic as well) that I heard? In any event, I am keen to see another folk-rock band - making use of banjo, mandolin, dobro and accordion - making a splash.

And if you liked "The Cave," give a listen to "Winter Winds" or "Little Lion Man". (Warning: the chorus of the later does contains language which may not be appropriate for children.)

A Silly Question: A Baroque Free Bird?

I just listened to this recording by the London Baroque of Pachelbel's famous--and overplayed--canon and gigue in D major. The musicians on this recording play it at a quicker tempo than the plodding pace you normally hear at weddings.



Given the ubiquity of the piece, I have a silly question to ask: When these big-time baroque musicians like Andrew Manze give concerts, do rowdy spectators shout "Pachelbel's Canon" the same way rowdy spectators at rock concerts shout "Free Bird"?

One of Those Days!

I'm fidgety. It's one of those days: the weather is beautiful and I should be somewhere other than in a computer lab entering exam grades. Even if my body cannot be out doing other things, at least my mind should be, right?

Have you ever noticed how items can lump themselves together in our minds? The weather has immediately conjured up the following constellation of diversions:

Musically, it is a day for Beirut, DeVotchKa, the Decemberists and Andrew Bird.

It is a day for Indiana Jones, The Life Aquatic, Tombstone or Apollo 13.

It is a day for Mickey Mouse and Tintin, The Twenty One Balloons and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

It is days like these that make me want to join the Explorers Club, the CIA or Mission Aviation Fellowship.

In a word: it's a day for adventures!


Alas, I'll get back to my exams now...

Scruton on Music

What with all the discussion of music here of late, I thought I would alert our readers to a recent article by Roger Scruton. The article is essentially a reflection on Plato's remark in The Republic (4.424c) that "[t]he ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city.”

There's a lot to think about (and listen to) in the article, but two points struck me as worth repeating and elaborating here. The first is the distinction Scruton draws between "dancing with" and "dancing at" someone else. Anyone who has had the misfortune of stepping into a certain type of dance club will immediately know what Scruton means by that distinction. In music where one dances with a partner, the rhythm seems to be "precipitated" out of the melody. Melody generates rhythm, and the two are inseparable. In music where one dances at someone else, on the other hand, the rhythm is mechanically imposed onto the melody. There is a disconnect between rhythm and melody. He calls the people who dance at each other "victims and not producers of dance." If our music makes us victims of dance, no wonder that dancing as an art form of social life seems currently to be dormant among the general population.

Related to the question of how rhythm is produced is the second point, the use of drum kits in popular music. Drum kits, as Scruton remarks, are often used as a "substitute for rhythm in so much contemporary pop." Drum kits can be used to bring out and reinforce the natural rhythm produced by the melody, such as in Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally." Unfortunately, drum kits are more often than not used to impose a rhythm unto an unwilling melody, as in Meshuggah's "Bleed."

While death metal is an extreme example of using drums to impose rhythm, drum kits (and especially drum machines, today) really do deaden any natural rhythm produced by the melody, in any number of rock and pop songs. This deadening can be most clearly heard in those songs whose intros feature either guitars without drums or drums without guitars. Guitars without drums give an idea of what kind of rhythm the melody naturally wants to produce, while drums without guitars give an idea of what kind of rhythm the musicians want to produce. Often enough, though, when the other instrument joins in, the melody and the rhythm do not mesh. That failure to mesh is what Scruton means when he speaks of rhythm being imposed on the melody.

Finally, a tip of my hat for this article to Postmodern Conservative.

Incongruous Music - Part II

A few mornings ago, I was singing one of my favorite songs, Chicago, from Sufjan Stevens' Come on, Feel the Illinoise album. The song has some really powerful first few bars - fit only for the first or last song of a concert, I would think - and catchy lyrics. But the particular line that caught my attention that morning was this: "I've made a lot of mistakes," repeated over and over again. It should come as little surprise that this reminded me of an earlier post about music with peppy tunes and depressing lyrics.

In the comments to that post we discussed various reasons for this phenomenon, with a general consensus that it began as a folk music reaction against the sorrows of life, as if to say, "This upbeat melody is my way of coping with the suffering I'm singing about. It's not so bad, right?" But Sufjan made me think there might be another possibility.

At the feet of the great Gregory Roper, I learned that the essence of tragedy is a world in which faults are punished, brutally punished, by the dark and primeval forces of nature; in a comic world, however, faults are overcome, defeated, mocked and transformed. If tragedy is characterized by the grim justice of death, comedy is characterized by the triumph of love over death.

Sufjan's lyrics reveal that his is a comic song, a song about love and redemption. True, mistakes have been and there are plenty of tears shed. But the peppy tune is not simply a rearguard against this sorrow or an attempt to ignore it. No, the music is a manifestation of the same redemption, the same triumph of love over death, that the lyrics - considered in their entirety - proclaim.


I fell in love again
All things go, all things go
Drove to Chicago
All things know, all things know
We sold our clothes to the state
I don't mind, I don't mind
I made a lot of mistakes
In my mind, in my mind

Chorus:
You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
All things know, all things know
You had to find it
All things go, all things go

I drove to New York
In a van, with my friend
We slept in parking lots
I don't mind, I don't mind
I was in love with the place
In my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
In my mind, in my mind

Chorus

If I was crying
In the van, with my friend
It was for freedom
From myself and from the land
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes

Chorus

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things know, all things know
(I made a lot of mistakes)
You had to find it
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things go, all things go
(I made a lot of mistakes)


(Go to 2:00 if you want to skip the talking section.)