| Exegetic Chains | |
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Album |
Songs for Pierre Chuvin |
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Released |
April 10, 2020 |
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Length |
4:11 |
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Previous Track |
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Exegetic Chains is the 10th song on Songs for Pierre Chuvin. It also appears as the 33rd song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4. A version of it was released on YouTube on March 26, 2020. [1]
Lyrics[]
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 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
Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]
- "This is called 'Exegetic Chains', and any musical references you hear to my own stuff, to other people's stuff, Biblical references, are there on purpose... This is the last song on the tape, and it's called 'Exegetic Chains'." -- YouTube recording
- "I knew it was going to be the last one, and it was a phrase that Chuvin had used as he was wrapping up his book. Not wanting to be bound by exegetic chains in one's interpretation of history. And at this point -- I haven't read a text like this in years, but when I was a student of classics, I was a very excitable student.. I would read this stuff and get extremely excited. That sort of writing, that sort of thinking where you're deep enough inside your subject to say to your listener, well, look, let's not be bound by exegetic chains here, and the listener, instead of going, oh well, foofaraw, who's using fifty-cent words now, instead just goes 'I know what you're saying', right. I like being at that level of discourse with somebody, being able to share in that kind of discourse. And so -- but it's also still funny, it's always a little funny when you're, when you're in your academic-speak, right. I think it never stops being funny if you step back a little and make sure you don't -- I wrote that down, a perfect song title. But it immediately suggested, you know, readings. And that's what the song is about, about how to read things." -- 2020-06-15 - WNYC Session - New York, NY
Things Referenced in this Song[]
- Blood Bank
- Damn These Vampires
- The Last Limit of Bhakti
- Magpie
- Ripple
- Downtown Seoul
- This Year
- Transcendental Youth
- The Panasonic RX-FT500 cassette recorder, discussed at length in the liner notes for this release and in the liner notes for All Hail West Texas.
Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]
| Songs for Pierre Chuvin |
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Track list: "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" |
| The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4 |
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| Track list: "In the Craters on the Moon" • "Letter from Belgium" • "Woke Up New" • "Pez Dorado" • "Picture of My Dress" • "Whole Wide World" • "Dark in Here" • "Korean Bird Paintings" • "Snow Owl" • "Against Pollution" • "The Last Place I Saw You Alive" • "In Memory of Satan" • "Bell Swamp Connection" • "Rat Queen" • "Shelved" • "Sax Rohmer #1" • "This Year" • "Have to Explode" • "Game Shows Touch Our Lives" • "Until Olympius Returns" • "The Young Thousands" • "Corsican Mastiff Stride" • "Blood Capsules" • "Hair Match" • "Solidarity Forever" • "Soft Targets" • "Black Pear Tree" • "Wolf Count" • "Never Quite Free" • "Wild Sage" • "Jazz No Children" • "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" • "Exegetic Chains" • "Going Invisible 2" |