Sax Rohmer #1[1][2]
Lyrics
Fog lifts from the harbor, dawn goes down to day[3]
An agent crests the shadows of the nearby alleyway
Piles of broken bricks, sign posts on the path
Every moment points towards the aftermath
Yeah ah ah
Sailors straggle back from their nights out on the town
Hopeless urchins from the city gather around
Spies from imperial China[4] wash in with the tide
Every battle heads toward surrender on both sides
And I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth
And I am coming home to you
If it’s the last thing that I do
Bells ring in the tower, wolves howl in the hills
Chalk marks show up on a few high windowsills
And a rabbit gives up somewhere, and a dozen hawks descend
Every moment leads[5] toward its own sad end
Yeah ah ah
Ships loosed from their moorings capsize[6] and then they’re gone
Sailors with no captains watch awhile and then move on[7]
And an agent crests the shadows and I head in her direction
All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection
I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth[8]
And I am coming home to you[9]
If it’s the last thing that I do
Banter
- This song is off Heretic Pride. And I don't know what to tell you about it, if there's two categories of Mountain Goats songs, and one of those categories is "the one where you wonder, is this gonna be the night? is he gonna have a stroke on stage right now?" This is one of those ones. [cheering] And I celebrate a people who anticipate my death as ardently as I myself do. (2019-04-30 Brooklyn Steel)
- Just as sick as the day is long. On drums, Mr. Jon Wurster. (2019-05-07 Mr. Smalls Theatre)
- JD: I had an office. Like my first ever office. After The Sunset Tree came out, I said, ah, things are getting busy, I should have an office to write some songs in. This is a long story, those of you who haven't been here before, the stories do tend to stretch a liuttle bit. So, I live in Durham North Carolina, I've been there for, close to 20 years, it's been a minute now. At the time, Durham was not a place people were moving to. Now, developers from upstate New York own like half of it. Developers from Cincinnati own the other half.
Peter: Yeah, blame it on upstate New York. That's who's taking over.
JD: It is.
Peter: It's upstate.
JD: It's actually Westchester County, to be fair. WHich to me, counts as upstate, because I don't know New York from Adam. But before that, Durham was, y'know, the downtown was half empty, all these empty buildings, and you could get office space on the cheap. I met a guy who ran a printing press, my friend Dave, who was looking for a place to get into this old science building that wasn't used anymore. Dave's deal when founding this office, Dave is a guy who likes to plan. This will shock you, but I'm a guy who doesn't plan a whole lot. I have to be taught to do that. He wanted to talk about the parameters of the office, whether to put a window here or here, and I was like, I don't care, let's just get in the building and we can talk about that later. So we did that. And I got the back office, it didn't have a window. It was way in the back corner and didn't have a window or any other outside light coming in. I had one fluorescent light above me and a wooden table, and a tape deck and no internet access. That is the room in which I wrote this song. (2021-08-06 The Orange Peel)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. "Written in my cave-like office in Durham[.] Sax Rohmer wrote pulp spy novels, and there's lots about them that's pretty objectionable; the character Fu Manchu is his best-known invention. But there's a feeling of menace and threat in his stories that's kind of addictive. And the tight-frame atmosphere he crafts has a real appeal to it, especially if you're working in a room with concrete floors and without any natural light." — Heretic Pride press kit ↩
2. John discusses Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer both extensively in his interview on WNYC, March 11, 2008, particularly explaining that their experience of alienation and generation of vivid imagery interested him while he repudiated the xenophobia that motivated them. Sax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward in 1883 and died in 1959 after writing over 50 novels. His first book written under his own name, and also the first book in the Fu Manchu series, was The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu. (Credit: Annotated TMG) ↩
3.This line could easily be borrowed from the Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
(Credit: Annotated TMG)↩
4. China was structured as an empire roughly from unification during the Qin dynasty in 221 BC until the formation of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1912. (Credit: Annotated TMG)↩
5. "points" instead of "leads" (2019-05-07, 2021-08-08)↩
6. "they capsize and then they're gone" (2021-08-08)↩
7. "and then they move on" (2021-08-08)↩
8. "I am coming with my own blood in my mouth" (2021-08-08)↩
9. app. "at long last!" (2021-08-08)↩