In Memory of Satan Lyrics
Stayed up late and wrecked this place
Woke up on the floor again
Cellphone stuck to the side of my face
Perfect howl of emptiness
Cast my gaze around the room
Someone needs to clean up this mess
Call in a favor from an old friend
Crawl down on my hands and knees
In old movies people scream
Choking on their fists when they see shadows like these
But no one screams cuz it's just me
Locked up in myself
Never gonna get free
Cannons in the harbor dawn
I crawled down here to dig for bones
One more season then I'm gone
Call in a favor from an old friend
I read an article that said:
"[In Memory of Satan] is a look at the process of someone becoming a borderline recluse, getting inside their head and looking out at a world that seems too much to take. "Everyone has spent those years, or maybe entire seasons, indoors where you don't really leave," Darnielle said. "That's when you go into the inner realms of the spirit. This guy's in hiding, and it's this most spiritual realm. That old saying holds here, that you can't be in a cave unless there's an exit, or else it's a grave."
this is what he said in Seattle on 12/17: “But I’m talking about the Satan who drives you to do things that are bad that you don’t feel proud about, that you spend some dark times with yourself going ‘well, right now I seem to kind of be worshipping the devil,” right. And you don’t realize it at first, it’s after you’ve been living four or five months in your condition when you say ‘oh, I’m really not in the best shape I’ve ever been in my whole life, I’m kind of wrapped up in shame and guilt but this seems to be how I live now’ and you make a little pact with the darkness inside of you and you say ‘if I can, if I can be with you this long, can I leave at some point?’ And then when you do, you remember it with fear and trembling.”
about treating clinical depression with the worship of satan, according to mr. darnielle.
Upon listening to a few other recordings, I think it's actually "Cannons in the harbor dawn" but I can't figure out how to edit these so screw it.
just some very minor corrections:
CRAWL DOWN on my hands and knees
Choking on their fists when they see shadows like THESE
CRAWLED down here to dig for bones
"This is a song about making a contract with your solitude, that you want to hold it to later on, and expect you to be able to wag your finger and say "you said!""
- John at An evening of awesome. What I can gather from these comments is at least that its about loneliness, and how you handle it. Maybe it's about satanic worship, I'm not sure.
I liked what he said about this song during a recent concert in San Francisco: "This song is about how when things are going very badly for you in your personal life; things are bad in your head, in your heart, in your body and everywhere. And you reach this point of stasis with it and then it begins to feel like progress. Because it’s not like you’re getting better, but you're getting better at not being well. [crowd laughs] It’s funny now. At the time it’s maybe less funny. At the time it’s maybe less funny. At the time it feels more like demonic possession. And it feels like the moment of demonic possession where you go man if I’m going to be possessed by a demon, then fuck it. Let’s just demonically possess this world. Let's do the things we demon possessed people do. And if people can’t handle my possessed self, that’s between them and whatever god they worship, but here in this house, we will worship the devil, that’s what you say. [crowd cheers] But this is the thing I’m always trying to point out. We say “woo!” about that, but the devil I’m talking about isn’t the devil you actually like. He’s not the devil of whiskey and smokes or whatever. This is the devil that stands between you and what you hoped to become. The devil who stands between you and your better self. The one with whom you form an alliance with at some point in your life because you can’t escape it any other way. And then later you recall this time with great trembling."