#jfpl

[iamtryingtobelieve]

Jealousy sows rejection with a kiss In silken palms that tear bone from skin

[el3venthcommandment]

the unabridged lyrics to peeled apples that the band chopped out are the most important ones even if they weren’t the catchiest smh, the song doesn’t mean anything without the piping hot takes on televised violence/numbness

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Journal For Plague Lovers part 6

Me And Stephen Hawking

“I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We have created life in our own image.” – stephen hawking –

1/ Underground car park born at Stonehenge Rivers Wyle, Bourne, [blacked out] destroying Queen mother stuffed for exhibition Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza 2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion. [blacked out] 3/ Paisleyism and ecumenism and cenotaph bombers [blacked out] wearing policing Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola [blacked out] 4/ [blacked out] 82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale [blacked out] [blacked out]

BRIDGE

Herman the bull and Tracy the sheep Transgenic milk containing human protein Their bacteria cheaper than lab baby food Attention, today it’s a cow, tomorrow it’s you

CHORUS

African Punch and Judy shows only rice price 100,000 watch Giant Haystacks Bombay fight Oh the joy, me and Stephen Hawking we laugh Missed the sex revolution when we failed the physical

hahahaha (joke)

[The image on the facing page is a marble sculpture titled St. Teresa in Ecstasy, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, finished in 1652. It is in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. It features Theresa in a state of ecstasy as an angel descends to plunge his hands into her heart.]

Reference explanations:

Most of these references are based off of news articles Richey read in 1994, either general summary-like references or nearly direct quotes from articles, mostly from The Indepedent.*

The Stephen Hawking quote is from a speech he gave at Boston's Macworld Expo quoted in the 4th August 1994 issue of the Daily News. A similar quote is in his 1996 lecture Life In The Universe.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric ring of standing stones. It’s managed by English Heritage and owned by the Crown. It is associated with death and burial, and bodies have been excavated in the area around the site. It is aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice. The “underground car park” line is a reference to proposal made in 1994 to close the A303 and turn the road into an underground tunnel that will pass directly under the site of Stonehenge itself. (Apparently said proposal was approved November 2020.)

I think “Wyle” is a misspelling of “Wylye”, which is a river in south west England. River Bourne is nearby; both go through Wiltshire county. Said county contains the Salisbury Plain, which also contains Stonehenge. The Rivers Wylye and Bourne are both part of the Hampshire Avon catchment. In August ‘94 the county was granted a multi-million pound package to protect the catchment from pollution and monitor buildings developments and water flow rates.

The “queen mother” line may refer to the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday parade in 1990. The Queen mother celebrated her 94th birthday in 1994, and a few informal photos of her were released in The Mirror in an article about it.

“Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza” is a reference to the “three strikes rule” proposed in California. A rule was proposed 1994 and passed in 1995 that allowed someone to be sentenced to life in prison if it was their third repeat offense, and if they had a previous conviction for a violent offense. A man named Jerry Dewayne Williams was arrested July 30 1994 for stealing a slice of pizza and due to this law was later sentenced to 25 years to life.

Mount Spurr is an Alaskan mountain. Its last volcanic eruption was 1992. Dante II was a spider-like robot from NASA that explored Mt Spurr’s volcanic crater in order to gather information and entered the crater in July 1994. It managed to gather information but on the way out of the crater, got stuck in the mud and fell back into the crater. Not sure if “Dante III” is a mis-type.

Dante’s Inferno is about the main eponymous character entering Hell and traversing its rings in order to reach purgatory and then paradise to find his lover Beatrice.

“Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair” is a reference to an article in the The Independent on 27 August 1994 which talked about men getting plastic surgery and liposuction. (The article is titled “Men who want a perfect body,” which certainly hits upon one of Richey’s preoccupations.) It mentions that there are “more and more images for men to look at, in much the same way female images have been pushed for years.” In a paragraph about penis enlargement surgery, it mentions that a complication from said surgery can be ingrown pubic hairs.

“Sanitation police, crime of proportion.” is likely a reference to an article by Zoe Heller called “How I fell foul of New York’s sanitation police.” The Sanitation Police in NY are responsible for dealing with things like theft of recyclables, littering, illegal dumping, improper disposal of solid waste, etc. They can issue summonses for citizens who mix recyclable and non-recyclable materials (which, from what I can gather, is what the Heller article is about).

Ian Paisley was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader in Northern Ireland. He promoted a form of Biblical literalism and anti-Catholicism, which he described as “Bible Protestantism” In the mid-late 1960s, he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. He opposed all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. A retrospective article about him was published in The Independent in September 1994.

Ecumenism is any effort aimed at the unity of Christians throughout the world. Most often, it specifically means the visible unity of Christian churches in some form.

“Cenotaph bombers” is a reference to the Remembrance Day Bombing that took place 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. An IRA bomb was detonated near a war memorial during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony. 11 people were killed and 63 injured. The IRA’s target had been soldiers parading to the memorial, not civilians. In August 1994, a ceasefire was announced by the Provisional IRA. In reaction to the ceasefire, Ian Paisley claimed that Northern Ireland would plummet into civil war.

“Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola.” The Soviet Union had medals for labour to honor workers for many years of hard work in the national economy, sciences, culture, education, manufacturing, healthcare, government agencies and public organizations. It was established in 1974 and stopped being awarded in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was an article in The Independent on 5 April 1994 about a new British embassy being built in Berlin. It mentioned that the Russian embassy was next door, and that Russian traders would sit across the street from the embassy and sell post-war bric-a-brac like Lenin flags and Hero Of Socialist Labour medals.

“82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale” is a reference to Godzilla, because the original Japanese name “Gojira” is a portmanteau of the words “gorira” (gorilla) and “kojira” (whale). By 1994, over 82 million people had seen the first 20 Godzilla films. Richey got that figure from an article  in The Independent about the cultural history of the films and their critique of environmental and economic problems. The other thing I could find was a reference to the fact that Godzilla represented Japanese fear of nuclear testing etc: On March 1, 1954, the U.S. conducted a hydrogen bomb test called Bravo shot at Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands. As a result of this nuclear test radioactive dust fell not only on many Marshall Islanders but famously on a Japanese tuna fishing boat called the 5th Lucky Dragon, irradiating all twenty-three fishermen. The effect of these nuclear tests on Japanese, a who had previously experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the heels of the destruction by bombing of virtually all other major cities, was to strengthen anti-nuclear sentiments, giving rising to a powerful anti-nuclear movement that spread across Japan in the form of a citizens’ petition initiated by women opposing nuclear tests. The petition, the largest of its kind ever, was signed by 32 million Japanese. That August, the first Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was held in Hiroshima. The 5th Lucky Dragon became the model for the boat called “Eiko Maru” attacked by Godzilla.

Herman the bull was the first genetically modified bovine in the world. Scientists injected the embryo with human gene coding for lactoferrin. Eight calves were born from Herman in 1994. All calves inherited the lactoferrin production gene.

Tracy the sheep was a transgenically modified sheep in Scotland, made to produce alpha 1-antitrypsin, which is a substance that was regarded in the 1990s as a potential pharmaceutical for the treatments of emphysema and cystic fibrosis. Alpha 1-antitrypsin comprised 50% of the total protein in Tracy’s milk.

“Attention, today it’s a cow, tomorrow it’s you” is an almost direct copy of an anti-genetic modification poster from the Dutch society for prevention of cruelty of animals, which portrays a topless woman with udders in place of breasts over the caption: 'Today a cow, tomorrow you.”

Punch and Judy was a traditional puppet show. It was usually very violent, with the characters of Punch and Judy (or Punch and another character) fighting and hitting each other. It is handled by a single puppeteer, and audiences are encourage to participate a la panto. It comes from commedia dell’arte.

“Only rice price” may be a reference to a 1976 film called Network. I may be making connections where there aren’t any, though. “What’s that got to do with the price of [blank]?” is a well known phrase (usually it’s “the price of tea in China”). In Network, “the price of rice” is the phrase used. The main character is a new broadcaster whose channel is failing, and he threatens to commit suicide on air. This causes the channel viewing to go up, so the heads of the channel decide to exploit this and allow the character to say whatever he wants and generally spew angry tirades. Eventually he is killed. But the “rice price” line comes from a monologue in which the character berates those watching the show, and tells them that they never read books or newspapers and that television is not news, it’s entertainment and amusement parks. Television is described as being able to make or break people, and as “indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.”

Giant Haystacks was a wrestler in the 70s. He was 6′11″ and weigh 638 pounds. There’s no info about him ever being in a fight in Bombay. The “Bombay fight” line could be a reference to the Bombay Riots that occurred in 92/93, but again there doesn’t seem to be any connection to Giant Haystacks.

Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He suffered from ALS or motor neuron disease, which left him paralyzed and necessitated the use of a speech-generating communication device. He worked with theories on relativity and black holes (which I do not understand and could not explain because I am not a scientist.) In 1988 he wrote A Brief History Of Time. He died in 2018.

The sexual revolution was a social movement started in the 60s and continued through 80s which challenged certain sexual and relationship norms/conventions. It argued for freedom to sex before marriage, right to abortions and the pill or other forms of contraception, normalization of pornography, homosexuality, other forms of sexuality, and public nudity.

*Many, many thanks to a reddit user who messaged me with all of this new information!  They did a ton of research and found all these references in old newspaper archives and 80s/90s BBC documentaries, which I never would have thought to check.

[forgotten-wars]

♥ Blonde Wire Appreciation Post ♥

[iamtryingtobelieve]

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Journal For Plague Lovers part 13

All Is Vanity

Haven’t shaved for days Gives me the appearance of delay The luxury of one more dye Pretend humility the ugly lie

I would prefer no choice One bread one milk one food that’s all I’m confused I only want one truth I really don’t mind if I’m being lied to

BRIDGE

It’s not whats wrong it’s what’s right Makes me feel like I’m talking a foreign language at times It’s not what’s wrong it’s what’s right If you buy vanishing cream you need vanishing cream remover at night

CHORUS

Born – school Drunk – fuck – work Home – dole Divorce – retire – die And then what and then what And then what and then what Maybe’s you realise It’s all vanity baby All is vanity honey All is vanity All is vanity All is vanity All is vanity

It’s the facts o’ life sunshine

[Accompanying page, which is written on a photocopied pencil drawing of a sphere]

Cornwall in King Lear Abused, humiliated. 12 step psychology HELICOBACTE PYLORIS – the bacterium behind ulcer formation. A colony living in the stomach mucus membrane Don’t eat it generates ulcers. Bleach gets rid of birthmarks The sun is someway wounded HALO-PERIDOL [very scratched out] drug to make you drowsy Defiance REORIENTATION TO DISLOCATION Rauschenberg “an insatiable appetite for anything but food” I LIKE GREEN in NYC trees are red & orange Nobody owns an idea. You just have to have one everyday Jesus & Elvis go together like mind body & soul Camille Paglia’s blood + earth approach ETRUSCAN WALL PAINTINGS SEGREGATION of GENDER as long as there is women’s work & man’s work possible to systematically pay women less. Pay differential bolsters male sense of imp & keeps a cheap casual lab force on tap female patients even more disabled than men are less likely to be offered openheart surgery                 Tracy

Kate Figes – Because of Her Sex – discrimination so embedded in our culture that we don’t even notice it Sparse undernourished, ill prepared Right or wrong is trivial next to life or death Spinoza – self styled philosopher MEN MKE MIRACLES are GUILTY of SACRILEGE Free Man Acts Honestly not Deceptively. Tell the 30 DAYS TO REPENT A FREE MAN SHOULD fear NOTHING OF DEATH. IS THERE A GOD. WHERE IS TRUTH. The Earth lives but is that God. PERNICIOUS teachings. By the Decree of Angels – EXCOMMUNICATION - Changes name to BENEDICTUS SPINOZA WORDS WORDS, CONCEPTION CONFUSED IN MEMORY CORPOREAL CREATURES – soul without A BODY Catholicism divides itself CROMWELL’S ROTTEN HEAD People Achieve Nothing.

References explanations:

Technically, vanishing cream is a moisturizing//beauty cream that leaves no trace when rubbed into the skin. Clearly Richey’s reference is a metaphorical double entendre.

The Duke Of Cornwall is a character in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Cornwall is a sadistic character who represents the worst parts of abuse of power. For him, power is a tool to satisfy sadistic tendencies. He basically does everything but commit murder.

Richey went through a 12 step AA program while in hospital at The Priory. He had trouble with a lot of its tenants.

Heliobacter pylori is a bacterium found in the stomach that causes ulcers and gastritis and is linked to stomach cancer. It burrows into the less acidic epithelial cells of the stomach. This information was likely copied from the episode of Horizon called Ulcer Wars, which aired on the BBC in May 1994.

Haloperidol is an antipsychotic. It’s used to treat schizophrenia, mania, Tourette’s, and symptoms of extreme alcohol withdrawal. It can cause somnolence as a side effect.

Robert Rauschenberg was a neo dadaist/early pop artist. He was a mental hospital technician while he served in the army. He wanted to work “in the gap between art and life” and championed  the role of creator in creating art’s meaning. He and Cy Twombly made collages and boxes out of trash and exhibited them in Italy. A lot of them sold; those that did not he threw into the river Arno. In 1966 he launched E.A.T. (Experiments in Arts and Technology), a non-profit organization established to promote collaborations between artists and engineers. He used found items and photos to create collages, paintings, and sculptures.

Camille Paglia is a social critic and a professor at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is critical of central features of much contemporary feminism though she calls herself a feminist.  She associates Western taboos of periods with male horror of the origins and termination of life: “Every month it is the woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself”. She also talks about how Christianity and Judaism are “sky-cult” religions, based on a male God in the heavens somewhere that created everything. This is different from aboriginal “earth-cult” religions which worship an Earth-mother or something similar. In sky-cult religions women are pushed aside, and even the language they use to rail against patriarchal culture is the invention of men.

The Etruscan civilization existed in Italy between the 9th and 2nd centuries BC. Their paintings that survived were frescoes on the walls of tombs. The tombs held whole lineages and were sites of recurring family rituals. Most paintings depict mythological scenes; sometimes there are images of everyday life. One of the best-known Etruscan frescoes is that of Tomb of the Lioness at Tarquinia.

“imp” and “lab” are probably Richey’s shorthand for “importance” and “labour”.

Kate Figes wrote the book Because Of Her Sex: The Myth of Equal Opportunity for Women in Britain, published in 1994. It concludes that, despite a change in attitudes, women still face institutionalized discrimination at the very fabric of a society that tends to refuse to accommodate a woman because of her sex.

From a reddit user who contacted me on 1/21 with this information: The notes from "Spinoza – self styled philosopher" down to the bottom of the page (including the line about Cromwell) are almost word for word taken from a Channel 4 docudrama that aired in July 1994 called Spinoza: Apostle of Reason. Somehow Richey has managed to transcribe some of the quotes incorrectly, though, which is possibly why the note "Catholicism divides itself" is slightly confusing (the quote from the show is "Protestantism divides itself", I think).

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher. He opposed Descartes’ mind-body dualism. He later rejected his Jewish religion because he didn’t agree with some of its dogmas or the belief in non-Mosaic authorship of the Hebrew bible. He was expelled from the Jewish community. “By the decree of the angels” is a literal transcription of part of the document. Spinoza argued that God exists and is abstract and impersonal. He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality.  Spinoza’s main contention with Cartesian mind–body dualism was that, if mind and body were truly distinct, then it is not clear how they can coordinate in any manner. For him, even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. Therefore, humans have no free will. They believe, however, that their will is free. This illusionary perception of freedom stems from our human consciousness, experience, and indifference to prior natural causes. Humans think they are free but they “dream with their eyes open”.

Oliver Cromwell led England into a republic, abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, after the execution of King Charles I in January 1649. After the reinstatement of monarchy in 1659, King Charles II’s new parliament ordered the disinterment of Cromwell’s body from Westminster Abbey for a posthumous execution at Tyburn. After hanging “from morning till four in the afternoon”, the body was cut down and the head placed on a 20-foot spike above Westminster Hall. While it was spiked on a pole above the London skyline, it gave a potent warning to spectators. In the 18th century, the head became a curiosity and a relic.

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Journal For Plague Lovers part 17

(Anything in brackets is either a word I cannot read at all, a fragment of a word that I can’t read, or my guess for what the word might be. If anyone can decipher those words let me know. Also, all spelling mistakes or weird abbreviations are whatever Richey wrote.)

[Description: bits of binder paper cut out and taped onto the outside back cover of the binder with wide black tape. The paper as well as the Bugs Bunny cover are painted over with a spiraling “sun’s rays”-type design with blue around the borders.]

B) Sredni Vashtar (a polecat kept by an affection-starved boy but she is eaten when in ‘Saki’ by H.H. Munro, polecat escapes. PERSECUTIONS/MONSTROSITIES                        BREVITY People who fail, mke them most persecuted VENDETTA, blunt edged self hate that cannot succeed, [flesh], TALKING THINKING NEVER ACTING Going to bed at 2, waking up at 2.30. He lives the life of an eremite lure of Mammon. AUTODIDACTIC impulse Shyness is seen as arrogance. I don’t know why I believe things. I’m not investing in men threatening me. Walking on spot. Evolution. Kind kind people shouldn’t be locked up. Unfair. Little Richards, BRAIN TRIPPERS.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MICK [H] Lt’d my intake. Don’t Worry About Me. I’ve gotta get to the Garden. I FEEL USED. Cigarette Boy Crime Increases as Rate Increases PHYSICS. DRUGS KEYS. EPIPHANY. CACTI. AS FRIEND. WONT HURT YOU. SEE INTO MAN. BECOME MAN. DIMINISH MAN. EXPECTATIONS INCREASE. EAT BIRTHDAY CAKE EVERYDAY. LEARN THAT REWARDS ARE BULLSHIT. DISCIPLINE IS JUSTified AS LONG AS IT’S YR DISCIPLINE and all around agree your discipline.

References explanation:

“Sredni Vashtar” is a short story by H.H. Munro under the pseudonym “Saki”. In the story, a boy named Conradin lives with his cousin and guardian Mrs De Ropp, who is very strict and abusive. To cope and to rebel against her, Conradin invents a new religion for himself idolizing a ferret that he keeps in a shed, which he names Sredni Vashtar. As his guardian becomes more harsh, Conradin begins a ritual, asking “Do one thing for me Sredni Vashtar” every night. Eventually, Mrs De Ropp ransacks Conradin’s room to find the key to the shed, and goes to the shed. Conradin begins to accept defeat, but when she does not return, and the ferrett appears with jaws stained bloody, Conradin realizes that she has been killed by Sredni Vashtar. The ferret vanishes, a maid finds Mrs De Ropp’s body and screams, and Conradin calmly makes himself toast.

An eremite is a Christian hermit or recluse.

“Mammon” is an old Aramaic/Hebrew word meaning ‘money’ or ‘wealth/riches.’ It is used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he says “you cannot serve God and mammon,” meaning you cannot selfishly covet wealth or material things and also give your self to God. Later, he explains that desire for things like fame, beauty, or money are examples of vanity, and the people who encounter a stumbling block with regard to following God are those “who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.”

Little Richard is a rock/R&B/gospel musician from the 1950s and 60s. His most famous songs include “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally”. In 1957 he decided to convert to a life of ministry and performed mostly gospel music. In 1984 he returned to rock n roll music. In 1984 he told a reporter he was “omnisexual” because he still felt that homosexuality was wrong. In 1995, in an interview with Penthouse, he came out as gay, saying that “God is a God of love, not hate.” Though ‘Little Richard’ was probably also Richey being self deprecating about himself and the medications he was on.

“Conversations with Mick [H]″. This is one where Richey’s handwriting is just barely too messy. It may refer to an address given by Gene Cook at Ricks College in 1988, in which Cook, a Mormon pastor, is sat next to Mick Jagger on a plane and has a conversation with him about sex and corruption and evil in/because of rock n roll music. There’s debate over whether or not this interaction actually happened. “Conversations with Mick H” might also be relevant to Mick Hucknall of the bands Simply Red and Faces (both influences of the Manics to some extent, or at least present in the music mags they were reading). It could also refer to Mick Hutson, a music photographer who photographed a number of Manics gigs from 1991 to 1994. However, I’m not sure if he was ever very close to the band the way others like Tom Sheehan or Mitch Ikeda were.

“I've gotta get myself back to the garden” is a lyric in Joni Mitchell's song “Woodstock”.

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Journal For Plague Lovers part 12

Doors Closing, Slowly

Realise how lonely this is? Self defeating, O fuck yeh Drowned in love and false kisses A gathering of no meaning

Sick of me, stupid and weak Those most worthy are denied Heautoscopy, revile him Always wake up wasn’t good enough

The merciful cast the last stone Love the soul not the body Let me forgive the word ruins I wanted to kill but my tears love

I want your sin third day perfected Lazarus burning Jerusalem Blaspheme, cut dead, Isiah One day birds of prey Israelite

The shadow is the cross ok Judgment must be willing today Silence is not sacrifice Crucifixion is the easy life

Embrace to betrayal Unarmed army salvation Listen to the selfish ones They’re the voice of accomplishment

BRIDGE

Remove the lamb from your thoughts Condense yr eyes yr heart yr taught

CHORUS……please turn over

CHORUS

Who threw the first stone If the stone is you Forgive them forsaken Bleeding feet an angels saviour

References explanations:

(Okay so I was raised non-religious and honestly for an English lit major I know very little about the Bible. So all of these summaries are whatever comes up when I google, which means they probably won’t be in depth and may not be accurate.)

Heautoscopy is a term used in psychiatry/neurology to refer to the reduplicative hallucination of “seeing ones own body at a distance. It can be a symptom of schizophrenia or epilepsy and is a possible explanation for doppelganger phenomena. A related word is autoscopy, which  is the experience in which an individual perceives the surrounding environment from a different perspective, from a position outside of his or her own body.

“Love the soul not the body” probably referencing St Augustine. From Augustine’s tracts: “Every man rejoices in pleasure and recieves pleasure by the body: but separate the mind from it, and nothing remains the body to rejoice; and if there is joy of the body, it is the mind that rejoices. If it has joy of its dwelling, ought it not to have joy of itself? And if the mind has whereof it may have delight outside itself, does it remain without delights within? It is quite certain that man loves his soul more than his body. But further, a man loves the soul even in another man more than the body. What is it that is loved in a friend, where the love is the purer and more sincere? What in the friend is loved--the mind, or the body?”

Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after being sealed in the tomb. This is from Luke 13:31-33, when Jesus is told that the King Herod wants to kill him: “At that very hour, some Pharisees came to Jesus and told Him, ‘Leave this place and get away, because Herod wants to kill You.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Go tell that fox, ‘Look, I will keep driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach My goal. Nevertheless, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for it is not admissible for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem.…’”

Jesus restored Lazarus of Bethany to life four days after his death. The section in which Jesus visits Lazarus’ sisters is where the famous line “Jesus wept.” comes from. Lazarus is the only resurrected character in the Bible (besides himself) that Jesus personally refers to as “dead.” I don’t know what burning Jerusalem is referencing, because as far as I know, Lazarus never burnt Jerusalem.

I’m gonna guess “Isiah” is just “Isaiah” misspelled. Isaiah was a prophet. The book of Isaiah, along with the book of Jeremiah, is distinctive in the Hebrew bible for its direct portrayal of the “wrath of the Lord”. In Christianity it is believed that believed that the Prophet Isaiah “knew more perfectly than all others the mystery of the religion of the Gospel”. Within the Book Of Isaiah are the songs of the suffering servant, and most references to Isaiah are about the Suffering Servant, how he will suffer and die to save many from their sins, be buried in a rich man’s tomb, be a light to the Gentiles.

In Leviticus 11, the birds considered unclean are eagles, vultures, buzzards, falcons, owls, ravens, and hawks, aka birds of prey.

“Unarmed army salvation” is most probably referring to the Salvation Army, a Christian charity.

“Who threw the first stone” is a reference to John 8:7, in which a woman who has committed adultery is brought before Jesus. The Pharisees tell Jesus that the law says she must be stoned to death for it, but ask him what his opinion is. He says “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” meaning that none of the other people are without sin and therefore none have the right to pass judgement. Conversely, the earlier “merciful cast the last stone” is perhaps an interpretation in the opposite direction; that the most merciful will cast the final, fatal stone and put the victim out of their misery.

Bleeding feet (and hands) is a characteristic of stigmata, which is the experience of bleeding, sores, pain, or body marks in the places corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus.

Also possibly relevant to the chorus is Sadhu Sundar Singh, an Indian Christian missionary from the early 1900s. He was known as “the apostle with the bleeding feet” because he walked everywhere he went and carried no possessions, living and eating with people who gave him charity. He was stoned multiple times throughout his travels for his Christian beliefs. He wanted to convert India and the surrounding areas to Christianity, but found it to be a struggle. He also found that he was ostracized by other ministry students for being different. After he left the ministry, he continued to walk all over the continent, preaching. At age 40 against all his friends’ advice, he decided to make one last journey to Tibet. He was last seen on 18 April 1929 setting off on this journey. In April he reached Kalka, and where he went after that is unknown. Whether he died of exhaustion or reached the mountains remains a mystery. He wrote a number of books on meditation, god, and the Christian and Hindu religions.