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C'est La Vie Tragique

by Ratatosk

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1.
I know it’s wrong, it’s wrong to be so dismayed. I know it’s wrong to not be sailing straight and true. A thousand miles from land is not the finest place to discover that your captain is insane. He had done nothing of any value, except claim credit where no credit was due. Oh, that brave pilot who saved all our lives! He was cast aside, and not mentioned again. And with none of us healthy, and none of us able, we cannot keep this ship afloat any more. I know it’s wrong, it’s wrong to give in when our injuries will heal… given time.
2.
I wanted to know how far to go before we turned and sailed for land, but you didn’t say and so we sailed long and hard. The world’s going to turn again, away from me. Hope has long since gone, and though it’s wrong, I feel calm and at peace. I have no home or family ties, so I’ll sail on. The world’s going to turn again, away from me. Once, I sighted land and all of my men swam for sustenance – but I turned around and left them behind; I can’t face the world because it’s going to turn again, away from me.
3.
If you asked me my biggest mistake, it’s every day of the last decade. Bound and press-ganged to distant lands, to barrenness I could not understand - unmanned outposts all in disarray… what a way to spend Christmas day. All of those things that are dear to me are nowhere to be found – but I am here, alone in the woods and desperate moods, because you’re irresistible now you’re gone. Solitude makes your behaviour turn: burning down trees just for fun, taking shots at things that do not move, swear at the sky and curse the moon. I’ll still watch for my fellow man, and I’ll open fire at my own command. I will watch for another ten years – oh how I long to go home! But I am here, alone in the woods and desperate moods, because you’re irresistible… now you’re here! Do my eyes deceive? But I do believe that you’re irresistible now you’re here, and it feels so great to hallucinate, because you’re irresistible now… you’re… gone. I could just about make you out through the haze, and there you stood: flanked by crepuscular rays. Then you disappeared and all returned to silence – it looked like a miracle, but it was just science.
4.
Leendert 06:47
Cast away alone with the slightest of slight hopes; yet somehow I am incorruptibly alive. This morning I prayed, took a walk and then returned. I found nothing decent out there at all. Very much dejected that I found no sustenance and the bird that I kept alive had died. The water's all gone, and so has all my hope… finding graves and hallucinations everywhere. I've burnt all the wood so I'm forced to eat raw flesh, I can't live long and I hope that God is a merciful one. All as before drank some tea brewed in some piss - I'm in a declining condition. I'm so decayed; I'm a perfect skeleton. I can't write the particulars, my hand shakes so. My heart's so full that I can't communicate. Yet somehow I am unbearably alive.
5.
Who would know where freedom lies? It’s not in our haunted eyes. Despair is within these walls, while round our ears an empire falls. To be treated with ambivalence is absolutely of no consequence. When death’s concerned you’ll do anything; I’ve killed friends to avoid dying. Which way will the thumb turn in this bloody coliseum - where weakness would be frowned upon; cowards wouldn’t last here long. Entire lives of slavery… nothing left but infamy. Despair is within these walls, while round our ears an empire falls. “We vow to endure, to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten and to be killed by the sword”. I have fought tooth and nail only to hear my fallen brethren wail…
6.
Whittemore 06:48
All is lost, as we still soldier on without knowing how or why, with no real objective (apart from the effort, to hasten the die that I die). Slowly dawning on us that despite all the travails passed, life has too great a cost. Nothing left to do but scream, “All is lost”. No one ever should hear these words I always hear, as I ask you what you're thinking of - you break my heart to pieces as you always tell me, you're thinking of the one that you love. Always, always, always doomed to be on the outside, and failing to carve a piece of life. Nothing left to do but scream, “All is lost”. A life spent in the service of apathetic fate will just break your spirit in two; our obituaries will read, “all was lost - you will never know how long it took to understand your life.”
7.
We don't perceive good fortune - just what we carve for ourselves. In this self erected prison we fight and ruin our lives. We fight from season to season; we cry for no good reason. C’est la vie tragique… We strive for greater riches at any and all cost. Cast your hopeful glances elsewhere; they are wasted on the likes of us. Marking time on an empty shore, counting days on a desert plateau: indefinite grief defines our world. It has to end one way or another… C’est la vie tragique.

about

A work in progress over about a year, this record deals with shipwrecks, lost soldiers, loneliness and alienation in far off lands during the early part of the 19th century.

Ratatosk is originally a mischievous squirrel from Norse mythology, but in this context is some guy called Rhodri Viney.

He has previously performed and released music under the names Teflon Monkey and Broken Leaf, along with being a major player in bands such as Right Hand Left Hand and Vito. He has also played live and on record with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, The Secret Show, Brave Captain, Cymbient, Little My and others far too numerous to mention.

The music of Ratatosk can be summed up in two words – miserablism and minimalism. If the initial motif is sufficiently sad and melancholy to bring a tear to the eye, then it’s explored and expanded upon with an almost zen-like repetition, using layered guitars, vocals, keyboards, melodica, musical saw, zither and pedal steel.

credits

released August 10, 2010

Written, recorded and performed by Ratatosk in The Boiler Room.

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Ratatosk Aberdare, UK

Sad songs sung sadly.

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