Alt-J (∆) | A Take Away Show

How did it come to this?

How did it come to this?

Long ago, I was loved.

Now forlorn and spurned,

a debile who can't hold his piss.

How did it come to this?

I remember the old feelings –

those which I once felt

when I was young and svelte –

I with eyes fixed on the ceiling.

I remember the old feelings.

My life is a bleak tundra:

none to speak to, none to love,

just good enough to get rid of.

Time's an invincible hydra.

My life is a bleak tundra.

I wish God had left me alone.

Now I sleep to pass the time –

P'haps I did that in my prime –

now I woke up a bag of bones.

I wish God had left me alone.

If only I had the courage,

I would hang myself high and dry –

I'd slit my throat if only I –

But I need to pay the mortgage.

If only I had the courage.

The ennui is slowly killing me.

Lone days pass: I enrage, I whimper,

I envy, I brood and I limper.

Sad to say: I just turned thirty-three,

the ennui already killing me.

I love you - Woodkid

I LOVE YOU from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Hubris

I am the one woman they want, the one they hate, the one they would like to strangle, marry, impregnate with their filthy seed; the one they dream of, fantasise about, write songs and poems to; the one they desire but cannot have; the one they cherish but smother. I smother them in their turn and watch their pathetic eyes wonder, ponder the great question of life and death while the former leaves room for the latter, my hands fast about their neck.

I have become a master in the art of delay, of persuasion, of lying, of execution. Some of my suitors I conjured up when they suited my needs – those shall be dispatched in due time – but my queendom spreads across the mortal world – and all of mankind now grovel at my feet.

I have more facets than Proteus; I am more ruthless than Jehovah, more cunning than the Klok gumma, more implacable than the Erinyes, more enduring than Hauhet.

I allow myself few arms to combat the hordes of men who roam these lands: silence, love and cunning. I, who was once considered a frail, pitiful woman, is now considered by throngs of males to be the goddess of murder, betrayal and love, all bundled together under countless shimmering disguises – nay, they are wrong yet again: I am beyond divinity.

I have consistently defeated the beaus, the lovers, the toy boys, the homo erectuses, the significant others by taking them and their libido to the cleaners, by trapping them with their own feelings, their own sense of guilt, their own inflated ego. Menfolk are so predictable. They are like dogs left alone for a couple of days and presented with a cornucopian bowl of food: they will gobble everything down in a matter of seconds, and will then feel hunger bitterly after just a few hours. And they never learn, unless I come and teach them how to masticate their food – love, sex, routine – and how to savour it – until I snatch it out of their drooling, expectant mouth.

None of the numerous inamoratos who lie athwart my path had more worth alive than dead. Such is the bare truth. None can be trusted, their sentiments are fleeting, inconstant and their hearts two-faced, without their knowing it. Patient I was and am no longer. Long have I waited for their call, for their attention, for their will to live, for their unconditional trust, for their total, unequivocal love. With men one always has to share love, whether it be a bed, a home or a fistful of minutes.

At dawn, a certain sadness stirred my heart. Unquiet are the hours, and at the pit of my stomach churns a leaden turmoil: time passes like the clouds on the plain where I now dwell, purposefully exiled from the world of men. For good. I feel I must lose myself in some senseless activity. Waste my time so that I may not see it pass, so that I may not feel its burden on my shoulders. Ward off brutish time in walking and sowing the land. Lost to the outside world, losing myself in my inner world, where the fringèd sandworts live, where the sólarhringur lasts a century, where I can consume myself in solitude, hatred, envy and fading hubris.

Burying the dead

"Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb?"

Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)

Soundness

"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world."

John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Hate

I'm a sinner, and my sin's hate. I deal, hatch, and sometimes receive, dents. Anger sure has a sharp edge, but disappointment is trenchant. Hate knows no confines, nor is limited by age.

I certainly hate my next-door neighbour, and he deserves to be despised: he is an over-sized sloth. My next of kin I also loathe, for other reasons – just as throngs of people do, but they curb their feelings. I hate all day long, and through every season. I hate men according to my humour, but there's no one I hate so much as her.

I'm a good hater. Denting souls has always been my sport. I started hating from an early age, yet I thought for a long time that I loved. I was wrong: love does not exist. It is a variation of hate, a lesser degree of detestation or, ultimately, its absence. Breathing hate makes life more purposeful, and keeps its balance.

To hate anything or anyone does not pave your path to hell, it only precipitates the inevitable. Soon or late, severance and disenchantment come in the way. Such is life. The end of our affair would have come down upon us, later than sooner, had I hated her less than I did.

Hate is all about jettisoning, all about torching all to the ground. It's all about digging ten thousand graves and looking at your calloused, injured hands, and grabbing hold of the shovel, wincing and carrying on. Hate must have no end.

Hate puts colour to my life, puts shades under people. Hate begets more hate. Love doesn't beget more love, it begets jealousy. And jealousy is so just one step away from hate. Yet jealousy didn't happen to me, nor to her. No, it was pure, blind hatred that grabbed a hold of me by the guts.

Some people hate themselves because they can't hate anyone else. I understood why she did what she did and the way she did it – I understood – hence I could no longer hate her. I daresay she hated me more than I did her, then; I outloved her in the end – she won the hate game. To love yourself when you can't love anyone or when no one does, that proves too difficult a task. Only those who have god can do that. Love is a burden. Hate lifts everything up if you hate with your whole heart, unless you add the smallest drop of love – and it drags the whole thing down to the ground like lead. This is why I confine myself to hating myself only, lest the little good will there is out there contaminates me. One is never too sure what hopes can do to oneself.

Hate filters the sentiments while love let them overflow. Hate makes you methodical and meticulous while love allows the passions to roam unchecked, stifling the self at will. It's better to hate for a good reason than to love by principle or by default.

Yet it always has to do with fatigue. Whether we feel our bones break because we hate until it hurts, or whether we get tired of hating – it's a long, enduring, arduous business, hating is – we hate a little less, and we are vulnerable. We let something akin to love, or empathy, seep deep into ourselves. This is intolerable, it's enough to make anyone mad or a recluse. I chose.

Hate is now all I have left.

Eidolonguage

"For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears."

Octavio Paz, poet, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1914-1998)

Wrath

I am a thing of anger. I am angry as never before.

Why did she do this to me?

I thought we were - I don't know what I think we were

but she was with me. With me!

What was the whole point? I swear I could kill her.

I'm sorry to disappoint but I'm not going to let her go.

I'll fight teeth and claw. I'll fight her if need be.

What she did was absurd. Look at the mess she's left.

Why did she do this to me, to us, even to herself?

She should have been honest, she should have talked to us.

Out with all her petty secrets! Out with all the festering pus!

She is insane. Insane. Or bipolar. Or both if you can be both.

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

She was the reason I was thinking,

the reason I woke up in the morning and not in the afternoon.

It was her who made me stand up, stick out my chest and move on.

How I hate her now. I am a thing of hatred.

How I loathe to have to go on on my own.

Yes, I hate her. I hate her now as much as I hate God.

Perhaps more, for God washed his hands clean of us for a good reason.

Her? How she did this makes it clear: we were nothing but gnats,

threats, thwarts in her delusion, pallid, crippled spats,

shards of reality in her carefully constructed queendom.

Yet she had made me come back to reality;

she had smoothed its sharp angles, had made it bearable –

yet slightly dreamlike and unstable in her oddity –

She was what I looked forward to on the evening way home from work.

She had made me expect when I had given up on hope. She.

I hate her guts now. Say that she comes back,

smile on her sleeve, glitter in her cat's eyes:

I would torture the truth out of those,

and leave her to her fate, let her to her reverie.

The genealogy of the catastrophe

is distinctly laid out before me:

agendas, memos, diaries –

I should ignore these,

ignore the pain, ignore the shock,

feign, spurn, mock –

keep the things under lock and key,

pay the fee and dash –

bury her five furlongs deep –

burn her – burn the whole world along

and sweep the ash under the rug.

She lived the lie till the end,

drank the cup of deceit to the dregs.

She believed it as she birthed it,

like a crooked infant one yet cherishes.

Shameless, consummate liar!

You nailed us with scornful pegs.

You are evil. Dizzyingly evil.

Uncaring and vile. Full of bottled-up anger.

I in turn am a thing of wrath. Of blood and wrath.

Eager to slay you, and you only lest I follow your path.

Yours are the furious actions of a mad solitaire.

Furious and savage and hurtful and rash.

Yet one thing I have to give you credit for:

you know how to finish off with panache.

Friends

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."

Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)