song meaning – Art & Theology

Timber Timbre is the moniker of the Canadian folk blues singer-songwriter Taylor Kirk. The opening track on his 2009 self-titled album, “Demon Host,” establishes the album’s haunted tone. The song is mournful and mystical, and it references God, religion, sin, death, and repentance.

Death, she must have been your will
A bone beneath the reaper’s veil
With your voice my belly sunk
And I began to feel so drunk

Candle, candle on my clock
Oh Lord, I must have heard you knock
Me out of bed as the flames licked my head
And my lungs filled up black in their tiny little shack
It was real and I repent
All those messages you sent
Clear as day, but in the night
Oh, I couldn’t get it right

Here is a church and here is a steeple
Open the doors, there are the people
And all their little hearts at ease
For another week’s disease

And eagle, eagle talons scream
I never once left in between
I was on the fence and I never wanted your two cents
Down my throat, into the pit, with my head upon the spit
Oh Reverend, please, can I chew your ear?
I’ve become what I most fear
And I know there’s no such thing as ghosts
But I have seen the demon host

There are several different ways to interpret this song, but at its core, it seems to me it’s about an agnostic facing death. In the first four lines he hears death calling to him—personified, atypically, as a woman. The “your,” I think, is God, whom the speaker names a few lines later. (Alternatively, “death” could be a noun of direct address and “your” its pronoun, in which case “she” may refer to a female friend who has died, inciting the crisis that follows.) Unprepared for this sudden confrontation, the speaker feels woozy with shock.

Candles and clocks serve as memento mori, reminders of death. As the wax burns down and time ticks on, he’s jolted out of a nightmare about the flames of judgment. Awake now to the reality of God’s holiness, he repents, realizing that God has been pursuing him all along.

He enters a church, but he’s turned off by the apparent easiness with which the people greet “another week’s disease.” I’m not sure what that means—the horrors and suffering of the world? personal sin? If these Christians struggle with either, they mask it. He is not able to feel the same sense of peace and victory they do.

“Eagle, eagle talons scream” is an elusive yet evocative line that may refer to the feeling of being pierced or gutted, perhaps having one’s sin revealed by the Holy Spirit. Or maybe it expresses a more indefinable sense of anxiety and distress.

The speaker admits he had always been perfectly comfortable sitting on the fence, “in between” faith and no-faith, not committing to this or that system of belief and practice. He never wanted God to intervene with his “two cents” on what is real and how to live. He resents the church’s teachings on eternal punishment and hellfire. And yet he’s ambivalent about Christianity. He cherishes his indecision, but he’s also restless. He seeks out the pastor to talk with.

“I’ve become what I most fear,” he confesses. And what is that? Being sold out to Jesus? Engulfing wickedness?

Even the title of the song, taken from the last line, is ambiguous, as the word “host” has multiple meanings. The “demon host” could refer to an army of demons, to a body that’s possessed by a demon, or to a parody of the Eucharist (in Christian liturgies, the consecrated bread, the body of Christ, is called the host). It seems the speaker has either experienced a stark vision of evil, or some evil has taken hold of him. Or maybe it’s death that he’s characterizing as demonic, but if so, it’s manifesting supernaturally, as he calls it ghostly.

In the music video there’s a menacing hooded figure that stands outside the shed in which Kirk performs, looking very much like the Grim Reaper. This entity listens, then gradually approaches, then even holds the microphone for Kirk, but his face is always in shadow. In some shots we see a second figure, dressed in the same garb, holding a guitar.

Lyrically, the song is unresolved, and musically, the last minute is unsettling.

Is this a song about damnation? Or dying to self, crucifying the ego, part of the conversion process? What about addiction? Or surviving a near-death experience and living in light of that? Whatever the particulars, the song is in the voice of someone who is shaken from his equivocation into seriously considering faith; someone who wrestles with God, mortality, and evil.

I’m eager to hear what you make of it or what stands out to you.

Moses and the Sea by Zak Benjamin — Zak Benjamin (South African, 1951–), *Moses and the Sea*, 1982. Hand-colored etching.

The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, where they had been held in bondage for at least two hundred years, through the miraculously parted waters of the Red Sea is the archetypal salvation event in the Hebrew scriptures. Throughout its books, one of the primary epithets for God is “he who brought us up out of Egypt,” or some variation thereof, for this action defined God’s character, assured the Israelites of his strength and will to save.

In addition to its historical sense, Christians have long understood the Old Testament exodus story as a prefigurement of the “new exodus” led by Christ, whereby we are liberated from the bondage of sin. As the New Moses, Jesus confronts evil—institutional evil, but also the evil inside each of us—and leads us out of its clutches. He stretched out his hands on a cross to create for us a clear path to freedom, then he stretched out his hands again three days later in resurrection victory, burying our former oppressors. Liturgical tradition acknowledges the link between the Exodus and the Resurrection by prescribing the reading of Exodus 14 at Easter Vigil.

In the farm fields of the antebellum South, African American slaves resonated strongly with the story of the Israelites. They looked to the Exodus—that literal, historic flight—in hopes that God would one day accomplish the same feat for them, and they even encoded this hope into the songs they sang. “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep” is one such example. The verses vary by performer, but the chorus is this:

Oh Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn
Oh Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn
Pharaoh’s army got drownded
Oh Mary, don’t you weep

One might be tempted to assume that the Mary referred to here is Moses’s sister, for narrative coherence. (“Miriam” is the Hebrew equivalent of the English “Mary.”) However, the more logical choice, given the weeping detail, is either Mary of Bethany or Mary Magdalene, both of whom the Bible records as weeping in response to death—Mary of Bethany, at the death of her brother, Lazarus (John 11:31–33), and Mary Magdalene, at the death of Jesus (John 20:11–13). In both stories, though, Christ demonstrates power over the grave. He brings Lazarus back to life, and he himself returns to life three days after his Crucifixion.

Melancholy by Odilon Redon — Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), *Melancholy*, 1876. Charcoal on paper. Art Institute of Chicago.

The chorus applies equally well to either Mary, and perhaps the dual reference is intentional. Their stories are similar, the one a precursor to the other. Mary of Bethany, however, seems to be the more popular interpretation, as evidenced by adaptations of the song that add Martha’s name to the chorus, such as the Swan Silvertones’ version (“Oh Mary, don’t you weep / Oh Martha, don’t you mourn”). Either way, the song creates a link between God’s victory over the Egyptians in the Old Testament and his victory over death in the New. The chorus is a consolatory reminder that God is mighty to save.

As with most spirituals, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep” operates on three levels:

as Jewish history;
as spiritual metaphor; and
as an expression of present circumstances and/or anticipations.

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Tag: song meaning

“Demon Host” by Timber Timbre: A Song Analysis

“Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep”: Death, Resurrection, and the New Exodus