Songs for Pierre Chuvin 1
Title: Songs for Pierre Chuvin
Released: 2020
Label: Merge Records
Liner Notes 2
none
Table of Contents
- Aulon Raid
- Until Olympius Returns
- Last Gasp at Calama
- For the Snakes
- The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea
- January 31, 438
- Hopeful Assassins of Zeno
- Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons
- Going to Lebanon 2
- Exegetic Chains
Aulon Raid 3
This is called "Aulon Raid"
Come riding with your soldiers
See how they fare
Keep yourself out of the action
Arrows flying through the air
Your reputation precedes you
Something must be done
Here in the heat of the onslaught
I am the one
Me and my crew
We will deal with you
We will deal with you
Me and my pagan crew
Come to lay down the edict
Come for the spoils
Come for the temple attendants
Anointed in oils
Come flanked by your big guns
Ride with the pack
Come screaming for tribute
Go out on your back
Me and my crew
We will deal with you
We will deal with you
Me and my pagan crew, yeah, yeah
Until Olympius Returns 4
Alright, well, I had a tracked version of this we were all ready to master. And, uh, and it turns out there was a mysterious seven-and-a-half second gap in the other one. All hail the mysterious gap!
Go through the motions every day out in the square
Listen for the hidden rhythms on the air
Nod in agreement when the tyrant holds forth
Look for a beacon from the north
Protect yourself, vouch for every member of the team
This is just a momentary ripple in the stream
Join in the rebuilding, sing loudly at your labor
Make friends with the new guys, be nice to your neighbor
Profess keen interest in the welfare of the state
Taste everything they feed you, say it tastes real great
Spit it down your sleeve every time you get the chance
This is just a brief improvisation in the dance
Raise up the columns, take the statues down
Praise the columns, spread the word around town
Behold the temple where the old ones stood
Is it not a thing of beauty? Don't it make you feel good?
Is it not a big improvement on the way things used to be?
Is it not a stately beacon for the whole world to see?
We will be right here on the day it finally burns
Everybody hold a spot until Olympius returns
Yeah!
Last Gasp at Calama 5
Out in the street, free and young
Songs of the Great God wild on my tongue
Here come the new guys again
Humorless men
Let he who's without sin throw the first one, like you said 6
Let anyone else throw the second as long as it connects with your head
One summer, then all of this is gone
One more summer, then no more swan
Hand me a torch, why not
Let's get some kicks in while the flame's still hot
They'll do what they were gonna do anyway
But Carthage may rise again one day
"With the measure that you use, so shall it be measured to you," 7
So you say, and it's true
One summer, then all of this is gone
One more summer, then no more swan
For the Snakes 8
All your brambles, all your creeping vines
All of the trash that people leave behind
All your fine, fine columns poking up through the pond scum
We will have uses for these things when we come
Cracks in the marble you hauled in from the quarry
These will be seen by all in their glory
Long hidden shadows of the places they came from
We will bring memories of these things when we come
All your abandoned things
Once fine vestments, statues with wings
They have their uses, every one
Let me slither across them in the sun
Pale imitations that you brought back from afar
We will show them to you as they are
Wind through the ruins, high and lonesome
We will have uses for these things when we come
The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea 9
One, two
One, two, three
Cause no trouble, 10 keep to our own kind
Known to exist, hard to find
Neck deep in our passions, serve who we serve
Enshrouded in moonlight, bucking the curve
Under the radar
Just out of reach
Among the thick woods
A mile from the beach
The burden of exile gets easy to bear
Sometimes forget there's cities down there
Woodsmen with axes, they come and they go
Snitch to the prefect about what they don't know
Smell the ocean breeze
We will never run out of trees
Under the radar
Just out of reach
Among the thick woods
A mile from the beach, yeah
January 31, 438 11
Hey, I'm totally in the full heat of this one, so I haven't bothered to tune, so I'm not at 440 here. I don't know what to tell you. I'm in G, anyway, if anybody's taking notes. "January 31, 438."
When the hunger turns in on itself
And begins to devour its host
Who do you turn to for help?
Who do you love the most?
I dance with the ones that brought me
I dance with the ones that brought me here
When the word comes down the wire that they're looking
To make an example of you
Skin and bones around a campfire beneath the stars
No good end in view
I dance with the ones that brought me
I dance with the ones that brought me here
I dance in the dark all alone
I dance for the god on the throne
If they come catch me and arrest me, mid-step
Let me go down dancing, let me be the last one left
Crushed like a seashell by a seaside warrior's foot
Trying to turn the tide
When the hunger's all that holds you together
Who do you want by your side?
I dance with the ones that brought me, yeah
I dance with the ones that brought me here
Hopeful Assassins of Zeno 12
Get tired of coming in from the mountains every year
Find some place to set up shop around here
Spread out a little, circulate
A log that floats down river will surely take on weight
Meet some people, make some friends
How long till we get sent back to the mountains?
It all depends
On the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful
Get familiar with affairs of state
Foretell the future, get a pretty good success rate
Notch some wins, take some losses
Be nice to the guys who wear necklaces with crosses
They will stab you in the back
You gotta turn the other cheek
You gotta learn to love Jesus, so to speak
Like the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful
Real filthy, think about getting clean
Even hear the soldiers talk about it, down at the canteen
Little kings keep coming, 13 one another's head
Which is exactly how the portents read
Watch with wonder, fail to discern
These people never learn
How long until the snake devours its tail? Longer than we think
Still it's gotta happen sometime
Until then, raise a drink
To the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful
Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons 14
They came like beasts who'd tasted blood
First a few and then the flood
Coursing over hill and dale
Wet paw prints on their bloody trail
Return the peace you took from me
Give me back my community
Show us the goodwill you were shown
But leave us alone
And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Yeah, restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Their hunger like a worm inside them
No sacred place could be denied them
They who talk all day of beauty
Call all the plain things dirty
Melted holes in celluloid
Give me back what you've destroyed
You who come demanding proof
Let your God rebuild this roof
And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Yeah, restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Make it whole again if you can
Stand in the smoke and say some prayers
Wave your hand
And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Going to Lebanon 2 15 16
We came down to the shore
Always some desperate people there
Anywhere people congregate for pleasure
They'll go hunting for treasure
Come one, come all, fortune-seeking brothers
Pick up the faint, faint scent of the faith of our fathers
Their names were known once to me
I hear them sometimes on the song of the sea
Take note of what will be gone
In the blink of an eye
The blue, blue water, the bone-white sky
You can set your watch by these guys
We will be high on the highway before they've even opened their eyes
Picture them scouring the sanctuary looking for gold
It never gets old
But there is no gold and there is no silver
And "the South takes what the North delivers" 17
Reverse the circuit sometimes, every couple seasons
Remember our grandfathers whenever we need a reason
Take note of what will be gone
In the blink of an eye
The blue, blue water, the bone-white sky, yeah
Exegetic Chains 18
Look closely at the shadows on the ground beneath the trees
The labors of Hercules
Wild grasses on the hills, rippling in the wind
Cybele unchained 19
The songs you sing at Christmastime
The stories that you tell
Well, I knew them well
Yes, I knew them well
Say your prayers to whomever you call out to in the night
Keep the chains tight
Make it through this year
If it kills you outright
The coins they toss at dancers whirling in the city square
Music on the air
The places where we met to share our secrets now and then
We will see them again
Change will come
Stay warm inside the ripple of the Panasonic hum
It grinds and it roars
Headed somewhere better if I have to crawl there on all fours
Say your prayers to whomever you call out to in the night
Keep the chains tight
Make it through this year
If it kills you outright
Album Credits
Recorded March 16-25, 2020, Durham, North Carolina,
utilizing the trusty Panasonic RX-FT500 + the Marantz PMD222.
Mastered by Brent Lambert at The Kitchen, Carrboro NC
Maximum thanks to Merge Records + to Ryan Matteson.
This album is for Peter + Jon + Trudy + Avel + Matt + Brandon,
pagan stowaways in a supercathedral world
Footnotes
- The songs of this album were inspired by the book A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by French historian Pierre Chuvin. Accordingly, each song title on this page is annotated with passage(s) that that seem likely to have inspired that song. All passages quoted from this edition of the book: A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Pierre Chuvin, translated by B. A. Archer, Harvard University Press, 1990. ↩
- Though there are no physical liner notes for this album, its bandcamp page includes some writing that fulfills a similar purpose:
SO THIS TAPE STARTED while the entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album, and I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them.
At our undisclosed location, one morning, immersed day and night in our work but also beginning to get the feeling that the increasingly febrile pitch of the newsfeed would continue to rise until it reached registers not seen in a while, I had a thought—what if the next Mountain Goats album was just songs about these pagans? And I wrote down the title “Aulon Raid.”
I GOT HOME about seven days later and the world was a very different place by then, and I took my old boombox down from the shelf where it sits flanked by brass deities from a former period of my life, and I got a wild idea to stand it on its end to reduce the unpleasant clicking that made it unusable—the hum & grind are one thing, basically ambient noise that adds to the pleasure of the sound if you’re into it, but the clicking I’m talking about developed sometime in the early 2000s and is not a conscriptable effect, it renders the Panasonic unusable.
Unless you stand it on its end, I learned, by accident, one day during the early weeks of the new days.
AS THESE DAYS WERE DEVELOPING, I realized, as I’d feared a week before, that the work schedule my band and I had planned for spring probably wouldn’t be panning out. The four members of the band split up our touring income equally, nightly pay & sales of merchandise; before we split up that income, we pay several people from gross receipts: Brandon, our soundman and tour manager of over a decade; Trudy, who works the merch table with style and flair; and Avel, who manages the stage no matter how unmanageable I become. I can’t do what I do without these people and I take great pleasure in trying to make their job a fun place to work. All seven of us rely on the Mountain Goats for our paycheck.
The boombox and I knew we had to do something. Back in the early nineties, when I’d first met Peter Hughes, I wanted to make a tape to be on his label, Sonic Enemy. It was Christmas break and I was on a hot streak, so I decided to try to make a full tape over the course of the break. That tape became Transmissions to Horace, which consisted entirely of work done on a daily basis during that span. I haven’t tried anything like that in a while.
I WROTE A SONG EVERY DAY for the next ten days while reading A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, starting with “Aulon Raid” and working in exactly the style I used to work in: read until something jumps out at me; play guitar and ad-lib out loud until I get a phrase I like; write the lyrics, get the song together, record immediately. Those original lyrics, exactly as written on the cardstock I save from comic books I buy, with corrections and everything, will be randomly inserted into orders; each is one of a kind, an original first draft of the lyrics to the first all-boombox Mountain Goats album since All Hail West Texas. It seems unlikely that I will ever again offer original drafts of lyrics for sale or otherwise, but pandemics call for wild measures.
I dedicate this tape to everybody who’s waited a long time for the wheels to sound their joyous grind: may they grind us into a safe future where we gather once again in rooms to sing songs about pagan priests & hidden shelters, and where we see each other face to face.
Hail the Panasonic! Hail the inscrutable engines of chance! Hail Cybele!
—John Darnielle, Durham, NC, March 2020 ↩ - "Marcellus [bishop of Syrian Apamea] wanted to begin the systematic destruction of all temples, 'thinking that this was the easiest way to convert' the population. He was killed shortly after, while attempting to destroy a temple at Aulon, in the district of Apamea. He was captured and burned alive during the assault, which had been launched with 'soldiers and gladiators'; this time (389?) he evidently had a private militia at his disposal." (Chuvin, 60) ↩
- Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria, initiated the events of this song in 391:
Theophilus first obtained authority over an abandoned building—a temple according to some, a basilica according to others—in order to make a new church out of it, and he mockingly displayed the sacred pagan objects he had found inside. This caused an uprising, and the Serapeum was turned into a fortress commanded by the Neoplatonist Olympius. Theophilus' role in Alexandria was that of a provocateur, as G. Fowden rightly says. Contrary to Marcellus of Apamea, he kept a low profile during the police operations that followed the riots and that led to the siege of the Serapeum.
(Chuvin, 66) ↩
Olympius, discouraged, secretly fled before the sanctuary fell to the soldiers, after explaining to his followers that the statues had lost their power, the divine dynamis, which had gone back to the heavens. He reached Italy and was not heard from again. - "In 408, at Calama (today Guelma in Algeria), pagan dancers attracted a crowd, Christians were roughed up, and church buildings were set on fire." (Chuvin, 74) ↩
- Likely referencing John 8:7 "When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.'" (New International Version) ↩
- Likely referencing Matthew 7:2 "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (New International Version) ↩
- It is less clear exactly which passage inspired this song (or if it was inspired by a single, specific passage at all), but I have selected a likely candidate.
"The marble facing of those parts of the Marneion [temple of Zeus Marnas at Gaza] that were prohibited to women was used to pave the square in front of the temple, so that not only women but animals as well sullied it constantly!" (Chuvin, 78) ↩ As is always the case, the simplest cults were the hardest to eradicate. During the first part of the fifth century, Hypatius and his monks descended on the rural sanctuaries of Bithynia to cut down the sacred trees. This, it could seem, was entirely on his own initiative.
(Chuvin, 80-81) ↩
It is not surprising that paganism persisted so close to the capital, in the province where three hundred years earlier Pliny the Younger had been concerned with the large number of Christians. The wooded hills along the Black Sea are very hard to penetrate, even today, and that is the region where Hypatius vented his missionary zeal. The open countryside outside of Nicomedia and Nicea and the plain of the Hypius River, along with the cities of the Pontic coast, may have gone over to Christ, but the inhabitants of the isolated valley of the Rhebas, though much closer to the capital, kept their ancestral festivals. Many centuries later a similar contrast would be seen in Thessaly, between the islamicized plain and the villages of Mount Pelion that remained Christian. Hypatius followed the example that his spiritual father Jonas had given him in Thrace, where one finds the same kind of topography. But how could he hope to cut down all the sacred trees in the Bithynian forests (called today the Sea of Trees, aǧaç denizi)? This mad woodcutter’s enterprise could not possibly succeed, and the tree cult has survived to this day, in that province as in others.- "On December 7, 416, the pagans were excluded from the army, the administration, and the judiciary. In 423 Honorius and Theodosius II reinvoked the old measures taken against them. Two months later they lightened the punishments provided for those caught making sacrifices (confiscation of goods and exile instead of death), and accorded their protection to pagans who 'cause no trouble.'" (Chuvin, 91-92) ↩
- "But pagans had not yet disappeared, and the death sentence would be restored three times during the years that followed: in 435; on January 31, 438, during a time of famine 'caused by the cults of demons'; and on November 4, 451, after the death of Theodosius II, in the case of the proprietor of a place where the cult was practiced." (Chuvin, 92) ↩
- There are two individuals named Zeno whose stories in the book contain assassins. First, the Roman general Zeno:
Isauria was a mountainous region bordering the southern coast of Asia Minor, which had survived in virtual independence since the third century. From time to time its inhabitants came down to pillage the territories of the interior or coastal cities; the emperors, unable to follow them into the Taurus glens, surrounded their lands with military colonies and fortified outposts. … The first Iasauran to obtain a post as a high staff officer was no less than a "commander in chief of both armies" (magister utriusque militiae) by the name of Zeno, at the end of the reign of Theodosius II (447-451). At the time of his death Zeno, according to ancient evidence (Damascius), was rumored to have been planning to assassinate the emperor.
(Chuvin, 97)
Second, the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno, also of Isaurian origin, reigned from 474 to 475 CE, and again from 476 to 491 CE. There were several attempts on Zeno's life: "It is not surprising that in 477 one of Zeno's slaves tried to assassinate him, as did a factorum of the queen mother in 478, and agents of the empress in 481." (Chuvin, 98) These attempts were unsuccessful, and emperor Zeno died of natural causes. ↩ - John's handwritten lyric sheet for this song indicates that the word "for" should have been here, making the line "Little kings keep coming for one another's head." However, that "for" isn't audible in the recorded version. ↩
- "In 414 Bishop Cyril had the famous sanctuary of Isis at Menouthis laid waste; the building then received the relics of the Holy Cyr and John." (Chuvin, 106) This was not, however, the end of the worship of Isis at Menouthis. Chuvin describes a later episode, initiated in late 5th century Alexandria when the Christian convert Paralius was attacked by pagans.
This incident led to the devastation of the last sanctuary of Isis at Menouthis. The bishop of Alexandria organized a raid, led by Paralius, of clerics and monks from a monastery in Canopus. The celebrants of the sanctuary had walled up the entrance to the chamber of pagan images, camouflaging it with a piece of furniture. But in front of it, in full daylight, a lamp burned, and incense and sweets were set out. Did the pagans hope to cheat their persecutors by exhibiting a rather harmless domestic altar, suggesting that there was nothing more to discover? Paralius, momentarily confused, soon uncovered the ruse; the entrance was reopened; and a monk from Canopus, a native Egyptian, entered the hiding place.
(Chuvin, 108-109)↩
Most of the images seem to have been made of wood and were small enough to be passed to those outside by one person. They had been salvaged from the Iseum in Memphis, ancient pharaonic capital of the north, from which the celebrant of the temple had taken them "when it became evident that paganism had lost its hold and was being abolished." This may refer, if not to an earlier date, at the latest to the ears of despondency that followed the laws of Theodosius I in 391 and 392 as well as the destruction of the Alexandrian Serapeum. It also doubtless reflects a local situation in Memphis: the faithful were no longer numerous enough to assure the continuity of the cult and the safety of its statues, which had been moved closer to the great Greek city and to a safer place. But their fate had merely been delayed. In 486 some of those statues were burned in Menouthis; others, placed in an outbuilding of the church before their destruction the following day, were guarded by monks and Alexandrians who steeled themselves by singing canticles throughout the night. As for the Christians of Menouthis, all but the priest were terrified. The pagans of the small town waited in vain for their gods to confound the infidels. At daybreak, how relieved was one camp, how disappointed the other!
The next day the abode of the pagan statues was completely razed down to its foundations, as was usual for the lairs of “false gods,” and a vast rampage was unleashed. Monks and zealous laymen (philoponoi) returned to Alexandria with the pagan priest from Menouthis, whom they had arrested, along with twenty camels laden with idols. In the capital the mob brought together quantities of statues found in the baths and in private homes -- not all of them cult idols, to be sure. They broke the legs and the arms of the statues, shouting, “their gods do not have surgeons!” Everything was piled on a pyre in a public square. - The first "Going to Lebanon" was on the 1994 album Zopilote Machine. ↩
- A section of A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, on pages 112-115, is devoted to the city of Beirut, Lebanon. ↩
- There are quotation marks around these words on John's handwritten lyric sheet, possibly indicating a quotation from the song "Unfair" by Pavement. ↩
- "Procopius was a cleric, versed in theology, who knew Plato well and argued with Proclus. He was the inventor of 'exegetic chains,' a method of commenting upon sacred authors that consisted of compiling earlier commentaries, listed under the name of their author, with the compiler proving his cleverness merely by a judicious choice of texts." (Chuvin, 115) ↩
- The goddess Cybele is mentioned at least once in the book. “After the sack of Rome [in 410] various pagan colleges were authorized to return to Rome. Those concerned were people engaged in spectacles: 'companion-dancers of Cybele'; bearers of flags, insignia (some in the shape of snakes, dracones), or statues; fortune-tellers, storytellers, and the like. These emergency measures were rescinded as soon as the situation returned to normal.” (Chuvin, 84) ↩