We could have easily gone with TS Eliot today. Lord knows we were tempted. Maybe next year. This year, we thought we’d post our favorite Ash Wednesday-themed song, “Ash Wednesday” by Elvis Perkins (Thank you, Trevor). Elvis wrote it in part about the death of his father, Anthony Perkins, of Psycho fame. So it’s very serious and sad but also beautiful, like the day itself. Enjoy:

The tents go up as I go down
Down to the flats and into the sound
The closer I get to the city
The further I am from memory
In the green grass looking up
For the words of the angry sun
‘No one’ when he says ‘no one’
Yeah he means ‘no one’
No one, no one will survive
Ash Wednesday alive
No soldier no lover
No father no mother
Not a lonely child in the up and in the bedroom
A black and white of the bride and the groom
Will bring me to my knees
With the colorized bad dream
That takes its place on
Ash Wednesday

White noise and love
Will be my only drug
On this day nine suns away
From that sad sad saturday
When fire my friend
Fire my villian
You take away yesterday
To give to me today
When nothing’s free no now it’s
Ash Wednesday

So each day is Ash Wednesday
All this life is Ash Wednesday

All the doors are shut
And the windows barely opened up
The fires all around
It’s the ending of the drought
And we are ready now
For tear gas clouds on my mind
Come on fill the house
Finally and weep
For it’s king and queen sleep
Both now in the arms of
Ash Wednesday

COMMENTS

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2 responses to “Ash Wednesday – Elvis Perkins”

1. John Stamper says:

   02/25/2009 at 2:44 pm

   Great song. Thanks guys.

   Side note: the songwriter’s mother (wife of Anthony Perkins) died on 9/11… she was a passenger on one of the hijacked jets.

   His father (Anthony Perkins) died of AIDS in 1992.

   Reply
2. Liz says:

   02/26/2009 at 7:26 pm

   Also, I think the “ash Wednesday” that Perkins is referring to is Septemeber 12, 2001.

   Reply