Birth of Serpents Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Let the camera pull back
'Til the fullness of the frame is clear and plain
Peer into the screen until you see it all
Like a vision in a crystal ball

Let it all fill with smoke
Is this somebody's idea of a joke?

[Verse 2]
Let the fixer work until the silver's washed away
And take the picture from the tray
Look hard at what you see and then remember you and me
And let the truth spring free
Like a jack-in-the-box
Like a hundred-thousand cuckoo clocks


[Chorus 1]
From the Oregon corners to the Iowa corn
To the rooms with the heat lamps where the snakes get born

[Verse 3]
Crawl through the tunnel and follow
Follow the light northwest
See that young man who dwells inside
His body like an uninvited guest

See the tunnel twist
Clutch your birthright in your fist
[Bridge]
Let the camera do its dirty work down there in the dark
Sink low, arise high, bring back some blurry pictures
To remember all your darker moments by

Permanent bruises on our knees
Never forget what it felt like to live in rooms like these

[Chorus 2]
From the California coastline to the Iowa corn
To the rooms with the heat lamps where the snakes get born

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About

Genius Annotation

“I went to Portland at the end of touring The Life of the World to Come and I did what I always do, which is walk around where I used to live and look at things. I got my hair cut by this guy who lived in Portland when I lived in Portland, and I started asking him about people we used to know. He told me that somebody I knew was still working at the same place he’d worked, so I walked down there. But it turned out my hair dude’s information wasn’t current, and my guy had been hit by a car just a year before. It was weird. I had all these expectations about saying hello to my old friend who I haven’t seen in 25 years. And, instead, he’s dead. So I went to the hotel and slept. I woke up at 2 a.m. and wrote "Birth of Serpents”, which is this marriage of images and the personal stuff underneath them. It’s one of the most personal things I’ve ever written."

“For me, going to Portland is sorta like if you’ve ever, uh, you remember this old video game where you used to try and shoot ghosts? It was a very, very, very simple video game that you will still see if you go to, like, some town that nobody else goes to. […] And the game is called, like, ‘Ghost Hunt’, or something like that, you know? And the idea is to shoot ghosts, which, I don’t think I need to tell you, is a completely ridiculous idea, because you can’t…—if they’re ghosts, there’s really nothing you can say to a ghost about a gun or a knife or anything, they would say ‘Well I’ve been dead, possibly for a very long time, so shooting at me is a terrible idea.’ […] So anyway, I went to Portland, there’s a lot of ghosts in Portland for me. I don’t try to shoot them, I try to make my peace when them—that’s maybe even dumber than trying to shoot them. And yet I do it every time I go there. I woke up about an hour or two after sleep and found a title sitting in a notebook and I said ‘That’s for me at this moment.’ Uh, Birth of Serpents.”

-John Darnielle

Credits
Produced By
Written By
Recorded At
Mana Recording Studios, Fidelitorium, Kernersville, Q Division, Mission Sound
Release Date
March 29, 2011
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