In Memory of Satan

Lyrics

Got my paintbox out last night
Stayed up late and wrecked this place
Woke up on the floor again
Cellphone stuck to the side of my face

Dead space on the other end
Perfect howl of emptiness
Cast my gaze around the room
Someone needs to clean up this mess

Tape up the windows
Call in a favor from an old friend

Make some scratches on my floor
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 'cause it's just me
Locked up in myself
Never gonna get free

Something sacred, something blue
Cannons in the harbor dawn
I crawled down here to dig for bones[1]
One more season then I'm gone

Black drapes over the crosses
Call in a favor from an old friend[2]

Banter

• Short version is it's about how you have to worship the devil sometimes. It's not that song. Different kind of worship, same kind of devil. It's about the evil things inside you that you have to learn to celebrate and live with and think of as a part of the whole that makes up you instead of rejecting them because you won't be able to shake them and sometimes they will need to be, as we say in our Wiccan circles, honored. And I frequent several Wiccan circles. My dancing is celebrated at them. (2012-10-16 Bowery Ballroom)
• Everybody has a time they spend in darkness, and in that time they meet the darkness and personify it, and shake hands with it, and make a deal with it in some way. (2013-06-28 The Soapbox)
• This is the other one from Transcendental Youth. It's about something I assume [giggles] One key to my songs is that I assume they're all universal and they're not. But then I would contend that the narrator of this song is doing something everybody does, as people just do it without obvious signs and signals. So this is about that sort of time in your life when you notice you're not calling your friends. At all. Or answering the phone when they call you. Because you don't want to talk to anybody or see anybody or be with anybody for an extended period of time. (2021-08-08 The Saturn)
• [the sustain pedal is not working] This piano is offering us two choices: permanent sustain, or none. The piano is a metaphorical character in a Mountain Goats song. You can have all of it all the time, or none of it ever. [audience: sustain forever!!] Matt Douglas as a musician is less interested in the theoretical possibilities of the all or nothing position. [poking keys] You remember seeing Peter Pan as a kid? You know how when Tinkerbell dies, you have to believe hard for Tinkerbell to not die? Give your love to sustain pedal, I hope the sustain pedal is trying so hard to [unintelligible]. [sustain pedal works! cheering] (2022-09-20 Saturn)

Live Performances

• 2012-10-16 Bowery Ballroom
• 2013-06-28 The Soapbox)
• 2021-08-08 The Saturn (recording)
• 2022-09-20 Saturn

Footnotes