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Song Info
Genre
Author
Vagenda
Rights
1994 Vagenda. All rights reserved
Uploaded
February 15, 2016
Track Files
MP3
MP3 4.3 MB • 160 kbps • 3:44
Story behind the song
*WARNING*
If you would rather enjoy this piece of art and have it come to mean something truly unique to you, do not read the backstory. Just as the band “Aerosmith”
once criticized the music video industry of robbing fans from having their own visions of imagery associated to a song and supplanting it with some
“official” footage, so too can knowing a songs backstory potentially come to rob it of having some special place and meaning for you.
Or both can exist. It’s all really subjective. Proceed with understanding.
Thank you,
V
The Official Backstory
This is a song about religion.
I was raised Roman Catholic. I had gone through Sunday school up to grade 12, and when it came time to do the Confirmation Ceremony, I upset everyone in my family. Instead of following the script they had you rehearse, and answer the priests "Do you have absolute faith in god, etc. etc." with a "yes", I declared instead, in front of everyone, that I "still had serious doubts".
My grandmother is the only person in history I think worthy of actually becoming a patron saint and in all honesty is best suited to represent the values of the entire Christian faith. She was very upset, and also the first to forgive me and appreciate honesty.
If there is a god, why kill so many children so young? Why have so many diseases? Why have parasites that serve no other end but to eat out one's eyes, and in nature, serve no other meaningful function at all?
Years later I would hear Stephen Fry express the same sentiment much more elegantly in an interview he had on RTE television's "The Meaning Of Life" wherein he was asked, hypothetically, if he were to die and go to Heaven, would he think that they would let him in. Fry responded with how he would have a few issues to take up with God if all of this was a real thing:
“How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
When asked about how he would react if he was locked outside of the 'pearly gates', Fry continued on objectively stating exactly how he would react:
“I would say: ‘bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’ Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him?! What kind of god would do that? ...Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable. It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”
I couldn't agree more. If god is perfect, as claimed by the Roman Catholic depiction/definition, then why isn't his existence obvious, why isn't it perfectly clear? Trying to arrive at his existence through logic nearly got Descartes killed, and Descartes was a believer. In a world strife with examples of starvation, war, famine, murder, rape, exploitation, disease, destruction, and other various forms of vice and evil, is that not flow in the design? Does that not call into question a need for a god to intervene and facilitate more good for balance or even for a semblance of a kind of karma to existence? If god gave us intelligent minds, is it not a sin misusing them and blindly accepting on faith with no evidence? If god exists, what has he to fear from heresy? Don't even get me started on the last 300 years of well documented sex scandals in the Vatican, or any holy war/holy crusade.
If god exists, 'Where Are Y
Lyrics
Where Are You?
© 1994 Vagenda. All rights reserved
(Composed at age 17)
(Recorded on October 18, 2015)
Why do you
Come here?
Your black faith has stained your lips
And you will spread your disease
Spread your condemnation
For reasons you can't see
Well, I don't think I'm Jesus
There'll be no miracles from me
I say begat your Holy War
I say begat your Holy War!
Down on your knees, low is your time
The slant of light casts a volatile shine!
To worship a God you can't find
Where are You?
Where are You, where are You?
Where are You?
A thousand years, a thousand tears,
A thousand deaths that had to be
You hunted down Ambrose
And turned your unquenched anger to me
To play inside of Nero's mind
As you had in those days
Will encompass
Will condemn
Will encompass
Generations.
I say begat your Holy War
I say begat your Holy War!
Down on your knees, low is your time
The slant of light casts a volatile shine!
To worship a God you can't find
Where are You?
Where are You, where are You?
Where are You?
