Massive Attack – Psyche

Many times on this blog, I’ve written about the relationships I have with certain songs and bands. I’ve written about these things in a very earnest, almost cringe-worthy way, I know. I make no pretense to be anything other than I am, I am not a writer, nor a music critic or any other such highfalutin’ thing. I just like sharing music that means something to me at the time I’m listening to it.

If I could create a song to express how I’ve been feeling lately, it would be Psyche by Massive Attack. The combination of Martina Topley-Bird’s vocals and Van River and Subliminal Kid’s Fever Ray inspired remix of an already almost perfect song sent me to another place. A place I needed to go.

Quench abuse and let love flower
Rip the cage out of your chest
Let the chaos rule the rest
Show without showing
What you know without knowing…

Dissolving who we are
Call out for yesterdays destiny come
We’re on a foreign shore
It was your mark of falling
I was the car still running
And when you call I’ll be your shield for life
And if you feel it you will fly
The sun should have been with me
When I was set to fall in
As I was set to fall in…

I Am Also a Nihilist – Renzo Novatore

The revolt of the free one against sorrow is only the intimate, passionate desire for a more intense and greater joy. But the greatest joy can only show itself to him in the mirror of the deepest sorrow, merging with it later in a vast barbaric embrace. And from this vast and fruitful embrace the higher smile of the strong one springs, as, in the midst of conflict, he sing the most thundering hymn to life.

A hymn woven from contempt and scorn, from will and might. A hymn that vibrates and throbs in the light of the sun as it shines on tombs, a hymn that revives the nothing and fills it with sound.