One Foot Before the Other Lyrics

[Verse 1]
On the very day I die, the very last of my desires
Is that you take my broken body and commit it to the fire

And then when the fire is finished, scrape the ashes in a tin
Take them down to London's drinking reservoirs and throw them in

And then specks infinitesimal of my mortal remains
Will slide down seven million throats and into seven million veins

And I will creep through their capillaries to the marrow of their bones
And they will wake to bright new mornings and then wordlessly they'll know

[Chorus]
That I remain
I am remembered
I remain
I am remembered


[Verse 2]
So these seven million innocents, they will have me in their blood
And when they die, they'll burn their bodies or be buried in the mud
And I will spread through streams and rivers like a virus through a host
From the hamlets to the cities, from the rivers to the coast

And from there into the Channel across the great Atlantic Ocean
And ever onwards to the new world, through the water's gentle motions

Until parts of me are part of every land mass, every sea
In the rain, upon your crops, and in the very air you breathe
[Chorus]
I remain
I am remembered
I remain
I am remembered
I remain
And all the things I love will be washed away in the rain
I remain

[Bridge]
I'm not convinced of the existence of these things that don't exist
Yeah, by Jewish boys with big ideas and scratches on their wrist
By a loving or a vengeful God, or one who condescends
Who'll wash his hands down in the mire among the misery of men

Or by ever turning circles hanging timeless in the sky
Like a dream catcher distracting from the fact you're gonna die

But I place one foot before the other, confident because
I know that everything we are right now is everything that was
That Wat Tyler, Woody Guthrie, Dostoevsky and Davy Jones
Are all dissolved into the ether and have crept into my bones
And all the cells in all the lines upon the backs of both my hands
Were once carved into the details of two feet upon the sand, so


[Outro: Chorus]
We remain
We are remembered
We remain
We are remembered
We remain
And all the things we love will be washed away in the rain
We remain

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About

Genius Annotation

This song, which, musically, is one of the heavier songs on England Keep My Bones and a throwback to Frank’s hardcore days with Million Dead.

Lyrically, it references the cyclical nature of life and death: even after Frank’s death, he will remain, because the atoms that made him will be redistributed when he decomposes and constitute new beings. He’ll die, be consumed, then the people his atoms are in will die, and so on, ad nauseum. Likewise, his own living body is filled with atoms that were once in the bodies of his own heroes.

This isn’t fanciful: even conservative estimates indicate that your body contains billions of atoms from, say, Shakespeare, Cromwell, or other notable figures from their time. And the water you drink? Indeed, it may have been drunk by dinosaurs: all of life is a cycle.

All of this is contrasted with a vision of life after death that Frank views as fantastic: the religious assertion of judgment and Heaven.

Credits
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Written By
Release Date
June 6, 2011
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