Silent Planet – Northern Fires (Guernica) lyrics

[LYRICS & ANNOTATIONS]

Ration my breath - terror clandestine in my chest. Mangled, I lay on a foreign forest floor. [1]
Caught in an instant, divided by distance. Alone in the fray, clutching my trigger I pray as I make amends with death on a distant shore. [2]

Such is the fate of the nation state [3] (despite the myths they propagate). [4]
The narrative never fits the crime. Democracy’s died this death a thousand times. The masses kneel before the golden cross - held by the priest [5] who bows at the feet of the king. [6]
We stand alone in the dust of what could be, fighting to find our humanity.
Bury me with my name in an unmarked grave - another casualty to the vanity of history. [7]
The war marches on after the killing ends. [8]
Take our lives: Colonize our minds. [9]

I’ve been digging through timelines, historical bylines; I find the fatal flaw in our design lies between thoughts we had and words we knew [10] - between what we’re told and what is true. [11] Who fuels the fascist? [12] A classist - inculcating the masses in passes... under the contrived countenance of contrition. [13]

The victor writes the story [14] - more often burns the manuscript. Set fire to a pyre, cremate the crimes that they commit. [15] But the flames kept us warm, so we bit our tongues and tasted scorn.

The bitter stench of finite men betrayed by the thieves they swore to pretend. The bell will toll [16] and in the end lay only echoes of what could have been. [17]

We stand alone in the dust of what could be, fighting to find our humanity. We stand alone in the dust of what could be; nothing we fought for will set us free. [18]

Throw myself, headlong, to the jaws of the beast: [19] The war machine that feeds for eternity.
Throw myself, headlong, to the jaws of the beast: The war machine that turns for eternity.
Throw myself, headlong, to the jaws of the beast: The war machine that feeds for eternity.
Throw myself, headlong, to the jaws of the beast: The war machine that turns for eternity.

1. Spring, 1937. Spain.
2. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bells Tolls
3. Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government
4. Plato, The Republic
5. Religion as a means for sustaining the rule of fascist dictator Francisco Franco from 1939-1975
6. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War
7. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge
8. Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon
9. George Orwell, 1984
10. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
11. Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
12. Anthony Beevor, The Battle for Spain
13. American corporations, such as Texaco oil, that made large financial gains due to loyal support of Franco’s nationalist forces in Spain, and subsequently Hitler in Europe.
14. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
15. The Bombing of Guernica, 26 April, 1937.
16. John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII 17 George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
18. Matthew 26:52
19. Mario Savio