![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Lockdown Long Song
(see youtube for info)
I love fandom. ♥
Can you hear them singing? Oh, you like to thing you're a god. But you're not a god. You're just a parasite eaten out with jealousy and envy and longing for the lives of others. You feed on them. On the memory of love and loss and birth and death and joy and sorrow.
♫ Live
Wake up, wake up
And let the cloak of life cling to your bones
Cling to your bones
Wake up, wake up ♫
no subject
I used this as an excuse to really listen to the words, and they finally made sense to me, perhaps not in the way they were used in the episode, but in and of themselves:
When you're a warrior, you're at least theoretically always on alert, and always ready to fight. If a warrior can finally allow herself to sleep, she can rest. And when she can rest, her heart can recover from being focused on tension and the necessity of possibly having to deal death. It can then focus on being alive and at peace.
no subject
Mmmm, properly gorgeous. And with one of the best speeches ever. <3 (I may have listened to it on repeat ever since I found it, it's perfect writing music for my current chapter.)
I used this as an excuse to really listen to the words, and they finally made sense to me, perhaps not in the way they were used in the episode, but in and of themselves:
I've been thinking about this, ever since I saw your comment last night. And it's not that I think you're wrong, but... I think it's more that there are two songs meshed into one? It starts as a lullaby (to keep the angry sun god asleep), but then once it begins to wake up, and the Doctor goes to fight it, it changes to the Wake Up part. They overlap a bit, but (because I am unable not to interrogate this stuff) here is the transcript of the relevant parts:
DOCTOR: They're singing to the Mummy in the Temple. They call it the Old God. Sometimes Grandfather.
CLARA: What are they singing?
DOCTOR: The Long Song. A lullaby without end to feed the Old God. Keep him asleep. It's been going for millions of years, chorister handing over to chorister, generation after generation after generation.
MERRY: ♫Akhaten.♫
CHORISTER: ♫Lay down, my king♫
CHORISTER: ♫Sleep now eternal. Sleep, my precious king. Lay down♫
MERRY: ♫O god of Akhaten♫
MERRY: ♫O god of, O god of, O god of Akhaten♫
MERRY: ♫O god of, O god of, O god of Akhaten♫
CHORISTER: ♫Sleep, my precious king.♫
DOCTOR: ♫Lay, lay down♫
CHORISTER: ♫Old God, protect us. Old God, protect us.♫
[It’s waking up]
CHORISTER: ♫Do not wake from slumber. Old God, do not wake from slumber. Rest your weary, holy head and cast our lives asunder. Do not wake from slumber. ♫
CHORISTER: ♫Old God, rest your weary, holy head.♫
CHORISTER: The song is over. My name is Chorister Rezh Baphix, and the Long Song ended with me.
[blah blah action]
MERRY: I want to help.
CLARA: So do I.
(Merry gets onto her pedestal and starts singing.)
MERRY: ♫Rest now, my warrior. Rest now♫
[Outside the Pyramid]
(The Doctor can hear her voice.)
DOCTOR: Okay, then. That's what I'll do. I'll tell you a story.
[Amphitheatre]
(The crowd joins in with Merry.)
ALL: ♫Please, wake up. And let the cloak of life cling to your bones.♫
MERRY: ♫Wake up. Wake up.♫
:)
no subject
Oh, indeed; I definitely know that. But no matter what version they're singing, they still want their god-sun to stay asleep and not burn them up kthnxbai. So why switch in the middle of Merry's version from continuing the "sleep now" message to a "wake up" message? Doing it in the middle of the song makes it even more incomprehensible.
That was one of the things that made me bang my head softly against a wall about the episode. (There were things that made me want to smash my head hard against a wall as well, but that's a different rant.)
Which was why I was glad, after reviewing and really thinking about the words sung in the video, to find a fanwank that made at least some emotional and intellectual sense to me, even if my interpretation had little to do with either version of the song as sung, or as interpreted/explained elsewhere.
no subject
I think it's that it changes from a song to the god, to a song for Eleven? Merry starts with 'Rest now My Warrior' - and warrior must be the Doctor - and then switches to 'Wake Up'. She says she wants to help the Doctor.
Ah, IDK. My brain is fried, I have been thinking about nothing except the latest chapter of my current fic for DAYS, but didn't want to just leave this hanging.
I like your interpretation btw, it makes a lot of sense. I just thought I could also try to do... something. But I don't think my head is up to it. I would love to see the script/know Murray Gold's thoughts.
no subject
Yes, that makes sense in retrospect. Thanks for reminding me about that factor.
Ah, IDK. My brain is fried, I have been thinking about nothing except the latest chapter of my current fic for DAYS, but didn't want to just leave this hanging.
Iya, ki ni shinaide. Don't worry at all. I'm with you there, which is why that romanicized Japanese phrase for "no need to apologize" is there. It's part of a (believe it or not) 2018
Actually, thinking about fic is better for me now than thinking about what's going on around me in this country.
no subject
Yes, that makes sense in retrospect. Thanks for reminding me about that factor.
It's an odd fish anyhow!
Iya, ki ni shinaide. Don't worry at all. I'm with you there, which is why that romanicized Japanese phrase for "no need to apologize" is there. It's part of a (believe it or not) 2018 [community profile] fandom_stocking story that I thought would be short and ... isn't. And it's eating my brain.
Having JUST posted the chapter that's not let me be in peace for, oh 14 days, I feel you.
Actually, thinking about fic is better for me now than thinking about what's going on around me in this country.
This, so much. Writing fic is something that takes me away from the news.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject