Keegan's Bad Seed (in full). [PART 1/2, Songs 1/9 to 4/9]
EDIT: First, some words on my intention with this, copied from a reply to a comment: If you read the album's lyrics (you can google them) you'll find that what I wrote is different in many essential places and that I added a lot of things (except in song 4). What I wanted was to use the structure of Nick Cave's songs and lyrics, and put my thoughts and emotions inside them. I wanted to express myself using someone else as a vehicle -- a kind of protective barrier that would allow myself to open up and, at the same time, reveal stuff to myself that I didn't know.
Nick Cave is in there, and he contributed some material, but I'm also in there, and I'm the main writer.
For you to see how different my writing is from Cave's lyrics, you can read Nick Cave's version of 9/9 Scum here. Or you can read Cave's 7/9 Sad Waters here. You're supposed to compare what I wrote with what Cave wrote to really understand. (You're also supposed to click the links on the work and see each video to the end. If you re-read carefully, you'll see that there are cross-references inside the work, and there are obscure references that only make sense after every video is viewed. At the same time, just viewing every video, and carefully reading their title and description, or noticing the mood of its music or speech, doesn't explain everything.) It also helps to read this not in a traditional way, but with a hebephrenic mindset, where connections are made with great ease and things quickly fall into obscurity: there is, to use an extreme example, a pun that is a pun on another pun that comes from an obscure reference that is derived from taking only one word of the previous sentence and going with it. That is, meaning may not come solely from the definitions of the words on the dictionary, but from a complex chain of obscure associations, where each rely upon the previous one. END OF EDIT.
They were made by listening to Nick Cave's album Your Funeral... My Trial and trying to decipher his words (they're very difficult to understand). I re-edited the resulting jumble into something more coherent, while trying to preserve the emotions and flow, and, for some of the songs, I found the time to re-re-edit them into something of a story told in 9 songs (remove incoherencies in the narrative from song to song, etc). The violence, religion and hate come from Nick Cave, the love and love story come from me -- these things were mixed into something new.
I also added links to youtube videos to some of the songs to give new meaning to the text, or to clarify some of it.
If you want the better edited ones (the ones where I edited two times) skip to number 6, 8 and 9 -- number 7 is nice too, although it's unedited -- but everything makes more sense in sequence.
THE FOLLOWING IS MY INTERPRETATION OF NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS "YOUR FUNERAL... MY TRIAL" ALBUM. I COULD HARDLY TELL WHAT HE WAS SAYING. IT IS BETTER READ AFTER LISTENING TO THE ALBUM.
// Keegan's Bad Seed, 1/9: Your Funeral, My Trial \\
I am a wicked man, and I've walked a crooked mile. Light the shameless widow in heat, in her pyre, the stars all looked down at me, they shamed the child. Your funeral, my trial, one thousand Holy Marys for my ghouls to dampen over, they dive in with crooked wings, cast a wicked shadow, the purple moon did intrycket. Did you smile?
Your funeral, my trial.
Here I am, a little man. That the bells, hardened, ring, on how all the crooked bitches that you were, mongers of pain. Save my soul, begone old woman.
My funeral, your trial.
// Keegan's Bad Seed, 2/9: Stranger Than Kindness \\
Bitter life in hotels. Spilling everything: her hand there, bursts on her skin. Stranger than kindness. Carresses herself. Grinds my poor bones below, they remember desire. Her inner slave and inner fool become strange themselves.
I find a rope, for her, hanging. Kindness is strange.
Fear rains in my head. There is no home, there is no bread. We sit at the gate and despair. I am going, a fool of passion.
They doubt she lies. Strange.
Asleep, her hand returns to the loins. Strange kindness.
Her holy soul, hypostases, tells me I'm dirty. I'm a stranger, many times, to her kindness.
// Keegan's Bad Seed, 3/9: Jack's Shadow \\
We dragged Jack and his sad dog from their home. And the loathe that burned inside him, the same loathe they ignited. His shadow learned to love his little darks and greater lights, and the sunshine, the sun is shine, and the sun is shine, hey little sun burn.
Jack wept and kissed his sad dog goodbye. Spat from their dirty dungeons into a fully different dim, shat from their constitutions into a truly different dim, and its shadow soon became a light, and children played with bright light into a spinning night that rode into the town. And Jack dropped his shadow down.
Set the shadow to check on her. What's wrong? Jack's home is not a home. His shadow just shambles together, oh shackle me free, my time is done. And repeal his shadow and cry "What have I done?" Oh the sun is shine, the sun is shine, it is my blood.
As if any wonder! As if any wonder, Jack and his damp sad home are gone. And to each one of us I want to hear you moan. Yes, to each one of us, it's starting bright in corners now, until that shadow is gone. The sun shines.
Is it any wonder? That love is fine. Love is stronger, a little stronger, it's burning light inside his house, until that shadow is gone, Jack's shadow is gone. I swear I heard a cry, love is blind, and who can blame our bloody blunders?
I can't remember. But it's damn bright and it's coming now. Drop that shadow, Jack's shadow is gone.
(Comment: this one goes on for too long, I know)
// Keegan's Bad Seed, 4/9: The Carny \\
And no one saw the comical. The weeks flew by until they moved on the show, leaving his caravan behind. It was parked on the Southeast ridge, and as the company crossed the bridge until the first rain fell on the bone dry river bed, it shun just so on the edge, away.
Away, it was sad to say. Dark boy, Atlus, Mandrake, the geeks, the hired hands. There was not a man among them that did not cast an eye behind them in the hope that the carnival would return to their own kind.
The Carny left behind a whole soul, skin and bone that they named sorrow. There was a shallow unmarked grave that the old man was laid and the van parched in the middle and it was the dwarves that were given the duty to stab the meat while they all wait. Bury the apostate.
And the rain came hammering down. Everybody running for their wagons. The mangy cats, the bird girl squawking, the whole valley reeking of wet beast, the whole creation packed up and on their way, the three dwarves should have dug a deeper one, still dirty from the deed they've done.
And Charlie held us and said, "I guess the Carny is not going to show." And they all felt sorry they didn't do a better job at burying his soul.
And the company went from a valley into the high ground. Rain beat on the ridge, and on the mound, until nothing was left, nothing at all, unlike the body that was left, the crows eating sorrow.
And the murder of crows did circle around, first one, then the others flapping down. And the Carny fans still sat upon the edge, tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge.
And the rain hammered down, the rain!
And no one saw the Carny go. No one saw. I said, "It's funny how things just go."
Posted Oct 24, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC · edited