Heretic pride
Lyrics Well they come and pull me from my houseĪnd they drag my body through the streetsĪnd the sun’s so hot I think I’ll catch fire and burn upĪnd there’s honeysuckle on the faint breeze today Spoiler alert: The main character here will not live long after he gets done lauding his imminent demise. Not me, and I have a stronger stomach than most. You could call this song a persecution fantasy, but really, who can even say the word "fantasy" without flinching? I am always happy to learn that black metal phrasings have burrowed their way into my subconscious. Title unconsciously cribbed from some Aura Noir lyrics
HERETIC PRIDE HOW TO
I love that the song gives voice to a witness without telling us how to feel about it. It’s called “Heretic Pride” (produced by the aforementioned Vanderslice alongside Scott Solter). Most of my favorite artists hover around or land somewhere near this insight, and here’s where The Mountain Goats make an awful lot of it. He remains our contemporary in this revolutionary posture. A recent piece about Eric Metaxas and his alleged audience (which sometimes overlaps at least a tiny bit with mine) has me realizing anew that William Blake’s refusal to make a firm distinction between religion and politics is as helpful (and groundbreaking) in our day as it was in his. I have too much to say about The Mountain Goats for this one post, but I have a couple of quick thoughts. I still haven’t met him in person, but the positive response got me researching further, and I found out that he’d produced a band called The Mountain Goats (who looked interesting). Upon finding an e-mail, I wrote him to thank him, and he wrote back.
The song helped me believe my own experience of the film, so…I poked around and found out it was written and performed by a gentleman named John Vanderslice. Years later, I heard a woman in Northern Ireland accuse someone of speaking “double dutch,” and I felt sophisticated for knowing the phrase even though I was still unclear about what it meant.Īlso on WRVU, I heard a song called, “Promising Actress,” which, I realized in no time at all, was something of a deep-dive, a righteous response even, to one of the greatest films ever made. I distinctly remember hearing Elvis Costello sing “New Amsterdam” on WRVU as a high school student and deciding, then and there, that I wanted to know everything there was to know about his work. I also wrote the words, “I wanna breathe that fire again,” on a piece of paper, so I could look the band up later. I think I first heard The Smiths while tuning in. When 91.1 FM in Nashville was WRVU, I would often take notes while driving and listening to it.