credits

released August 1, 2001

Arsonist’s Prayer

The horror—that we may not live We may not live To see the walls fall from between us Between us and the world for which these songs cry out

That the desire—which still lives—to contest, a mark of shame upon certain foreheads, Will remain an offering unto the dead: illegible, irrelevant And we will be shaped into priestly statues in poses of defiance before our own masters To softly, safely sing the praises of a disarmed war, a lukewarm love So lest we fall out of lust for life, let us risk all we have to risk For only a fool—only a fool—would cling to this world as it is

If I could strike one blow to spite their force, though I might bear one hundred more, I would wear the welts like rubies, and the shackles for a crown And if I had one hundred hearts I would throw them all before their bullets Before I’d sell a single one to wield their power So lest we fall out of love with life, let us give all we have to give For only a fool would cling to this world:

Autumn—the leaves fell, Then the trees Became fences and factories Now winter is coming Let’s put the heat on

. . . but no fire or ice, their absences suffice. The nights now will be long and cold, with a silence like you’ve never known And you’ll shake in it, cry out at it, but it will wrap you in its spider’s thread Perhaps you’ll stare into that blankness until it peers back into you And both of you see nothing—and it will wrap you in its spider’s thread: That blessed are the wombs that are barren Blessed are the branches that bear no fruit Blessed are the rivers run dry For we have come to the end of the world To die

So die—die and become—perish, let go and be done With all the tangled threads that keep you tied to husks of false hopes, fossilized If these years still wait for those who will be more merciless than history To burn the chaff and make an end, to make the fields fertile once again Then break—break the skin Open—open, and reach in And draw the nerves out taut to play a song upon those tight strings Such as this world has never heard Let it be dirge, hymn, or dance, vomit or tears, absolving snowfall or acid rain Summer that sets fire to the harvest, or ice age that, thawing, blossoms crimson pain Pleasure or death, splendor or rust, flash flood or drought that turns jungles to crust Those tender caresses for which the skin aches Or tear gas to breathe and plate glass to break The uproar of riot, the hush of nightfall, or sirens announcing the doom of us all The triumph of failures who fought at all costs, or despair of derelict dreamers who lost Silence and space—hungers to be—momentary eternities The furrows of ash left by passion and wrath The faithless fixed stars over our wandering paths As the moon moves the sea, we could move these mountains As comets drop to earth, so might empires end As old suns explode rather than fall to dust Let us steal fire and pay with our lives if we must For if all this world is God’s, and man a mere plaything of laws and things Then why not raze it all, and in destroying at least set sail on borrowed wings? Anything other than what we have known Strike the match, take a breath now—the hour has come To dance the resistance, teach tied tongues to sing: This is the end of the calendar, the Last Loosening! Around and inside you, the violence you fear—for or against it, it’s already here It forged the cord that bound you to the ground—it built these walls LET’S BURN THEM DOWN

On-site audio recorded April 21, 2001 in Quebec City, Canada by C.W.C. agent C.K. during the people’s resistance to the “Free” Trade Area of the Americas summit. Piano recorded May 30, 2001 at the Soundlab studio in Greensboro, North Carolina. Additional instruments recorded June 3-10, 2001, at Mars studio, by Bill Korecky. Mastered June 13, 2001 at the Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

a - percussion stef and the mattrix - string section sammi curr - four more strings b - megalomaniacal eschatology

This is a blessing, a sanctification of every extreme human beings have gone to to stay alive inside, to push back on the world that presses down so hard. Not to suggest that the young woman who burns down a posh resort acts more nobly than the one who spends her years in libraries—but nor is she any less noble, so long as she acts to nurture what is beautiful within herself and find common cause with others. We’re not in the least afraid of ruins, nor of making them, living, as we do, in them—as they do within us. Until we have cleared these away—as the woman who burns down the resort does—so the seeds in the soil beneath can germinate again, uproar can be our only music.

We lose everything, you know, piece by piece or all at once. If I am to lose this voice I treasure so much, better I lose it in song. If our wrists are to bear scars—as far too many of them already do—let them be from the handcuffs we wear in wars against everything that is senseless and destructive. Dreams hold each other’s hands and form a chain out into the darkness, brush up against secret futures, longed-for solutions and resolutions, points of departure for journeys to other lands. The nihilism of our contemporaries could be the dryness in the brush before a prairie fire, and this the antechamber of upheaval and rebirth. Action, simple action, anything to see if those fires can indeed be ignited, is holy if anything is. Come with us into the new world.

With our lives in our hands and weapons if need be—Catharsis, CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective