drown your arms

[asakiyume]

That song, "Clamanda," those lines,

And shall the world with dread alarms
Compel you now to ground your arms

I'm hearing it as drown your arms

The scene--

Archers drown your fiery bolts
Foot soldiers, your flaming swords
Into the wide sea send them
Into the ocean plunge them
Now kneel here on the shingle
And drown your incandescent rage
In the brine of your deep grief

But I just made that up. The actual hymn is more real, more intense:

fires fill the sky from whence you came
And brimstone in a driving rain
Blows ash and dust upon your heels
As you in haste your savior steal

I tell you, shape-note hymns. There's just nothing like them.

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's a very compelling, provoking lyric!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

That is amaaaaazing. And very catchy.

Say do you wish to turn again? It's an interesting question. I never heard about anybody but Lot and his family escaping Sodom's destruction, so the idea of armed former Sodomites charging out into Canaan's plains and being asked politely to lay down their swordsa nd shields in order to coexist with their new neighbours is an odd one.

What it actually reminds me of most is the mythic story telling how the Mexica migrated onto what was then Tolteca land, drained a swamp and (with Huitzilopochtli's help/favour) founded Tenochtitlan, the city that would become their main base of operations. Some people think the Mexica were once the Moche, a similarly blood-obsessed culture, while others think Mexica who managed to flee the conquistadors penetrated up into New Mexico, where they supplanted/destroyed the culture of the Anasazi before falling into disrepair themselves

What would proselytizing Sodomites be like, let alone proselytizing Gomorrahns?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's a mysterious lyric. The Sacred Harp has only the first verse and the chorus, so I wonder if Keith Murphy made up the second verse.

But even the part that was present from the start is mysterious. Yes--are they refugees? But fleeing well armed? Are they caught between God's wrath on the one hand and the Canaanites on the other?

(And the part about brimstone in a driving rain definitely made me think of your mythos)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

It made me think of that too, obviously. Enough so to want to write that story, in some form or other--it'd actually transpose really well into the Hexslinger 'verse, when you think about it. People fleeing what they think is God's wrath, or perhaps just the wrath of a god-like personage...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Go for it! Heads up, though that the chorus part is actually included in Ancillary Justice, though with slightly changed wording. But if "God Save the Queen" or "Silent Night" can feature in more than one novel, I don't see why "Clamanda" can't.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

The Cooper book has another verse or two, but I don't have a Cooper Book, so I only discovered that when I pulled up a Youtube video of it and heard them sing. Of course, it's hard to hear the lyrics.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euF4dBFTEMo

Google gives me this:

Beware of pleasure's siren song
Alas it cannot soothe you long
It cannot quiet Jordan's wave,
Nor cheer the dark and silent grave.

O let your thoughts delight to soar
Where earth and time shall be no more
Explore by faith the heav'nly fields,
And pluck the fruit that Canaan yields.

There see the glorious hosts on wing,
And hear the heav'nly seraphs sing
The shining ranks in order stand,
Or move like lightning at command.

Jehovah there reigns not alone,
The Savior shares his Father's throne,
While angels circle 'round his seat,
And worship prostrate at his feet.

I've puzzled over that first verse of Clamanda since I first sang it. These verses added on don't really help much. I mean, they make sense with the theme of "do you really want to go back to Sodom," but they don't fit with the martial imagery, or the "compel you now to ground your arms." Now, there are few hymns, some of them in the Sacred Harp, that equate living as a Christian in martial terms, sometimes as a battle you're armed and ready to fight (it's my impression that shields show up way more often than the helmets and swords, and there are a lot of "God is my shield" kind of images, but I would be inclined to consider those generally originally intended as battle shields, not just "something that defends.")

It's also worth considering the ways that Sodom is equated with the real (sinful) world, and so I think that's what's going on here, a conflation of the battle-against-Satan/the World metaphor with the fleeing Sodom image, where leaving Sodom is an image of conversion. "You've left Sodom and picked up the arms in the fight. Are you going to turn around again and return to Sodom just because the battle is hard? No, the pleasures of Sodom are transitory and death awaits you, On the other hand, heaven/Canaan is so much better and also eternal."

That's not really how I used it in AJ, but hey. It's a nice song! And also I do like the idea generated in handful_ofdust's comment below. Heck, I got a 12K word story once out of a misunderstood rhyme, and I still think it's one of the better things I've done. I think you could get quiet a lot out of that particular construal of that verse of Clamanda.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I have the Cooper book and didn't even think to look!

I thought that kind of *was* how you used it in AJ: Breq nerving herself up at a tough moment (so, not the Canaan bit, but the "have you come this far just to surrender?")

I definitely had the feeling (because of the direct address, I guess), that we were supposed to identify ourselves with the people fleeing, but then was puzzled because of a too-literal interpretation of the Sodom part. But yeah, if Sodom is just this world around us (世の中--Buddhism, which reaches me through Japanese, does this so well), then it makes more sense. I like the martial imagery, it gives spiritual (and also mental/emotional/any internal) struggle its due.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

But so Keith Murphy's verse is probably his own? Which maybe explains the "from whence," which makes me wince.

I saw that on the album as advertised at CD Baby, the song has a subtitle/alternative title (it's done with a slash after "Clamanda") of "Farewell to the Taliban." Say what now?

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'To see the King in glory crown'd
And see the blazing skies'

From 'Idumee'

Amazing stuff

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, "Idumea" is great-- "and must my trembling spirit fly into a world unknown?"

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

One for you here:

http://cmcmck.livejournal.com/352386.html

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Heart pounders indeed!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So intense!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Great song. I do like the a cappella versions, the musical arrangement adds a nice theatricality to go with the words, not to mention I could actually follow the lyrics in the video you linked to. :P

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes--there's raw power to the a cappella versions, but this particular one, with the musical accompaniment, is just really beautiful, I think.