This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
A Retinue Of Moons
A retinue if moons, of icy moons
They illuminate the land
And they make me thing of you
What sunk silently
To the depths of a mystery
A clue that only
one scientist knew
Who knew that the sky is now found to contain
Benzene and methane and chalk
And bloody mud, muddy blood from the sky
From the sickly sweet wings of Edith’s Checkerspot Butterfly?
They die in the ocean
Their legs are broken
The rain slows their flight as it soaks their wings
A microphone will listen for thunder
The telephone will dial the number
To deliver a, a clearer picture
Of weird wet weather
This puts all previous discoveries in doubt
These are things we have theories about
Overhead two sky titans
They collide in slow motion
While over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows
A 1000-foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed
Your own special home
A choking, vapor-laced haze
Obscured by acid rain
Enveloping everything
On the edge of the Milky Way
The Infidel Is Me
Am I the infidel?
I thought it was supposed to be someone else
But I see now it’s me
I am my own worst enemy
Just think of it
The sequence of the incidents was intricate
So brilliant yet illegitimate
Not disastrously but triumphantly
When we met in the secret facility
I said, (you remember what I said)
“It’ll be easy for you to recognize me
By the coils of concentina wire
surrounding my head in a shiny halo
of sharp blades.”
“There are people here
That would do you great harm
So please, just try to stay calm
And I’ll get you through this,”
You whisper
And with that, my illegance had shifted
The betrayal, the delusions
My Quantico rejection
The isolation, the breakdowns
And mysterious injections
Ah, the infidel is me
Then it was I
The lone futurist leading scores of resistors
Armed with tridents
But you’re not there
Why can’t you come in from the cold?
Why can’t you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me?
Why don’t you come in from the cold?
Why don’t you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me
Ay, the Infidel is me
And in defiance of our alliance
I say, go away and lick your wounds
And when you get them really clean again
You can dream away your dark dream
Ay, the Infidel is me.
A retinue if moons, of icy moons
They illuminate the land
And they make me thing of you
What sunk silently
To the depths of a mystery
A clue that only
one scientist knew
Who knew that the sky is now found to contain
Benzene and methane and chalk
And bloody mud, muddy blood from the sky
From the sickly sweet wings of Edith’s Checkerspot Butterfly?
They die in the ocean
Their legs are broken
The rain slows their flight as it soaks their wings
A microphone will listen for thunder
The telephone will dial the number
To deliver a, a clearer picture
Of weird wet weather
This puts all previous discoveries in doubt
These are things we have theories about
Overhead two sky titans
They collide in slow motion
While over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows
A 1000-foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed
Your own special home
A choking, vapor-laced haze
Obscured by acid rain
Enveloping everything
On the edge of the Milky Way
The Infidel Is Me
Am I the infidel?
I thought it was supposed to be someone else
But I see now it’s me
I am my own worst enemy
Just think of it
The sequence of the incidents was intricate
So brilliant yet illegitimate
Not disastrously but triumphantly
When we met in the secret facility
I said, (you remember what I said)
“It’ll be easy for you to recognize me
By the coils of concentina wire
surrounding my head in a shiny halo
of sharp blades.”
“There are people here
That would do you great harm
So please, just try to stay calm
And I’ll get you through this,”
You whisper
And with that, my illegance had shifted
The betrayal, the delusions
My Quantico rejection
The isolation, the breakdowns
And mysterious injections
Ah, the infidel is me
Then it was I
The lone futurist leading scores of resistors
Armed with tridents
But you’re not there
Why can’t you come in from the cold?
Why can’t you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me?
Why don’t you come in from the cold?
Why don’t you come in from the cold
To make an unlikely alliance with me
Ay, the Infidel is me
And in defiance of our alliance
I say, go away and lick your wounds
And when you get them really clean again
You can dream away your dark dream
Ay, the Infidel is me.
Lyrics submitted by boneyardsorceress
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Aradiea, I think the line "Overhead two sky titans / They collide in slow motion" is a reference to 9/11. The first sky titan would be one of the towers of the World Trade Center, a skyscraper, thus a "titan". The other sky titan would be the airplane that hit it.
And "While over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows / A 1000-foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed / Your own special home" could be a reference to global warming and how nature is seemingly taking over humans, despite our attempts to put it in what we believe to be its place.
Great song, the tune is addictive and the cello is fabulous.
There is merit to all of these thoughts. IMHO "Retinue of Moons is a wonderful description of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan. Launched in 1996 I believe the song was penned after and this is one caveat. "2 Titans collide in slow motion" is an excellent description of the orbit of Titan around Saturn and the microphone listening for thunder was indeed on the Huygens probe dropped on Titan... methane, benzene, ice, mud and exposed 1000 foot sediment are all early descriptors.. it may well be an environmental warning - as earth may have once been like Titan and we sure do not want to return.... It is a incredible song in any event. Later for Infidel...
@ntnglmnt That is a good guess that I honestly would not have thought of.
I have given this song a lot of thought over the years, as it is one of my all time favorites by Rasputina. I see the first half of this song as talking about the destruction of the environment by man. Climate change, increasingly violent weather and toxins in the atmosphere etc. Here are some interpretations of specific lines that people have had questions about:
"A microphone will listen for thunder The telephone will dial the number To deliver a, a clearer picture Of weird wet weather"
This is simply a representation of the science of weather detection and also it foreshadows a coming storm. I'm reminded of the microphones and seismic detection instruments that listen for earthquakes in the ocean to detect tidal waves.
"Overhead two sky titans They collide in slow motion While over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows A 1000-foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed Your own special home"
The Sky titans are talking about huge clouds colliding slowly in the sky. This paints a picture of a looming storm or some type of imminent bad weather.
An ice tongue is something that forms on coastlines when a glacier suddenly shifts / melts into the ocean. Talking again about climate change and its effects on the environment. The chunk of sediment is of course what's left behind once the ice melts.
When the second movement of the song begins things change... And the following lines are, in my opinion, the whole point of the song.
"The Infidel Is Me
Am I the infidel? I thought it was supposed to be someone else But I see now it�s me I am my own worst enemy"
This is saying. Oh my God, I'm one of them. I'm just as responsible as everyone else for the destruction of the planet. I drive cars, I fly in planes, I support the companies that destroy the planet, I buy their products. I have become everything I hate i.e. "I am my own worst enemy".
It gives me chills ever time I hear it because it's so true.
The rest of the song is about how she wants to reject all these trappings of waste and excess and lead the resistance against the animal we have created.
The line "but you're not there...." is talking about someone that she loves, who will not join her by rejecting all the environmentally harmful things that we do to the earth. Then she goes on to say:
"why don't you in from the cold, to make an unlikely alliance with me." Saying please, join me.
Overall it's a beautiful song and much like the rest of the album, it deals with a sort of "dooms day" topic. This album is sort of a farewell to civilization as we know it
I am completely mesmerised by these songs, perhaps its Melora's chantingly "heya"s or the strong sudden cello solos and the creepy beating drums, I just am absolutely intranced by it ...
Based on the origins of "Choose Me For Champion", I have to assume that "Infidel" is from the point of view of Thursday Christian/Osama bin Laden.
And maybe the alliance is with Mary Todd/you know who, in some sort of conspiracy.
If I were to venture a guess, I'd say "The Infidel is Me" is allegory to the US involvement in the Soviet-Afghanistan war in the early 1980s and how the consequences of that involvement played out regarding the Taliban, Al Qaida, etc.
Not long ago, I was incredibly drunk and incredibly tired and "A Retinue Of Moons" was in my head as I was trying to sleep, and I became convinced that it was about how we have technology to control our surroundings and make life easier for us, but we still can't control the weather. And then I began to get really scared, as I tend to do when I'm wasted and thinking about music.
Exactly how correct that interpretation is, I really could not say. I think the "Microphone will listen for thunder..." bit was in my head or something.
i like your answer...and the means in which u came by it!
I think that perhaps the secret alliance in "The Infidel Is Me" is an allusion to specious claims/semi-popular misconception that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had any sort of connection (beyond sharing the traits "Arab" and "bad"). Melora's analogue for bin Laden cries out, "Where is my unlikely ally?" but is left deserted because the alliance didn't actually exist.
I really, really like purple ninja girl's interpretation, though.
How do we correct the lyrics?
1st line: Of moons line 3: make me thinK last of retinue: AT the edge line 3 of infidel: but NOW I SEE it's me line 6: HOW the sequence line 14: SMALL, sharp, blades line 20: my ALlegiance line 22: quanticAL line 39:IF you get them really clean
They're minor, I know, but they shouldn't be there.