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Human Life Begins On The Far Side Of Despair.

from INVISOS (2012) by Violent Ends

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ZEUS: I forsook you? How?
ORESTES: Yesterday, when I was with Electra, I felt at one with
Nature, this Nature of your making. It sang the praises of the
Good- Good--in siren tones, and lavished intimations. To
lull me into gentleness, the fierce light mellowed and grew
tender as a lovers eyes. And, to teach me the forgiveness of
offenses, the sky grew bland as a pardoners face. Obedient to
your will, my youth rose up before me and pleaded with me
like a girl who fears her lover will forsake her. That was the
last time, the last, I saw my youth. Suddenly, out of the blue,
freedom crashed down on me and swept me off my feet.
Nature sprang back, my youth went with the wind, and I knew
myself alone, utterly alone in the midst of this well-meaning
little universe of yours. I was like a man who’s lost his shadow.
And there was nothing left in heaven, no right or wrong, nor
anyone to give me orders.
ZEUS: What of it? Do you want me to admire a scabby sheep
that has to be kept apart; or the leper mewed in a lazar-house?
Remember, Orestes, you once were of my flock, you led in my
pastures among my sheep. Your vaunted freedom isolates you
from the fold; it means exile.
ORESTES: Yes, exile.
ZEUS: But the disease can’t be deeply rooted yet; it began only
yesterday. Come back to the fold. Think of your loneliness;
even your sister is forsaking you. Your eyes are big with
anguish, your face is pale and drawn. The disease you’re
suffering from is inhuman, foreign to my nature, foreign to
yourself. Come back. I am forgetfulness, I am peace.
ORESTES: Foreign to myself--I know it. Outside nature, against
nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I
find within myself. But I shall not return under your law; I am
doomed to have no other law but mine. Nor shall I come back
to nature, the nature you found good; in it are a thousand
beaten paths all leading up to you--but I must blaze my trail.
For I, Zeus, am a man, and every man must find out his own
way. Nature abhors man, and you too, god of gods, abhor
mankind.
ZEUS: That is true; men like you I hold in abhorrence.
ORESTES: Take care; those words were a confession of your
weakness. As for me, I do not berate you. What have I to do with
you, or you with me? We shall glide past each other, like ships
in a river, without touching. You are God and I am free; each
of us is alone, and our anguish is akin. How can you know I
did not try to feel remorse in the long night that has gone by?
And to sleep? But no longer can I feel remorse, and I can sleep
no more.
.
ZEUS: What do you propose to do?
your
(A short silence)
ORESTES: The folk of Argos are my folk. I must open their
eyes.
ZEUS: Poor people! Your gift to them will be a sad one; of
loneliness and shame. You will tear from their eyes the veils I
had laid on them, and they will see their lives as they are, foul
and futile, a barren boon.
ORESTES: Why, since it is their lot, should I deny them the
despair I have in me?
ZEUS: What will they make of it?
ORESTES: What they choose. They’re free; and human life
begins on the far side of despair.

lyrics

Throw my body to the waves.
That cheap face was never worth a name.
Born to a world where nothing stays
entombed in fear and disbelief,

If the depressive night should bear its teeth,
I only hope (I only hope) to breathe.
Swallow my pride, my tongue, and my might
lest I forget that I am drowning
Swallow my pride; swallow my tongue, and my might
Reduced to hate.

Swallow my pride, my tongue, and my might.
Sleepless in the beds of dying lights.
Cursing promises of yesterday
How do you go on?
I am a means to an end.
I am chaos, I am guilt, I am sin.
I am a means to an end.
I am failure, I am the end
I am the end.
I am the end.
I am the end.
I am my own end.

credits

from INVISOS (2012), released January 1, 2012

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