Difference between revisions of "A Place in the Dirt"

From MansonWiki, the Marilyn Manson encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 14: Line 14:
 
}}
 
}}
 
"'''A Place in the Dirt'''" is the ninth track on the 2000 release ''[[Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)]]''. The song consists of only four verses and two refrains. While the instrumentation in the verses consists of only a synthesizer and percussion, the choruses are heavy by contrast. The percussion is also absent from the first verse, making it the most quiet section of the song.     
 
"'''A Place in the Dirt'''" is the ninth track on the 2000 release ''[[Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)]]''. The song consists of only four verses and two refrains. While the instrumentation in the verses consists of only a synthesizer and percussion, the choruses are heavy by contrast. The percussion is also absent from the first verse, making it the most quiet section of the song.     
−
 
−
==Analysis==
 
−
still in this spot. "Put me in the motorcade/put me in the death parade/dress me up and make me your dying god" --OK, now we're REALLY getting into it. Anyone with a stitch of comparative mythology knows that the Crucifixion is an old old story dressed up with Roman devices, that the tale of a sun god born at Midwinter, ritually slain and returned to life, had been told all over the world thousands of years before the rise of Xianity. --Manson, who's read all the right books, knows this full well, and pulls the assassination theme ("put me in the motorcade") back one step further from JFK and JC to the Dying God tradition that precedes them, connecting them in an unbroken line. (All we need now are some references to the Holy Grail, the Maimed King and the Waste Land, to deal a full-house hand of the whole Western Magickal Tradition. Not for nothing are the JFK years so indelibly associated with the legend of Camelot.) And he continues to equate all their stories as one: "Now we hold the 'ugly head'", he sings, "the Mary-whore is at the bed." The name "Kennedy" comes from the Gaelic Ceannaideach/Cinneidigh, "ugly head" or "wounded head" - prophetically enough. The Mary here would be the Magdalene, in popular iconography a reformed prostitute (though she was never in that trade), and widely supposed to have become Jesus' lover or even his wife. Her anointing him with expensive ointment was commented on by Jesus as a token of understanding that he was marked for death. (An avatar of the Goddess, she of course knew a born Dying God when she saw one.)
 
−
 
−
But Xianity took the form of this ancientest of stories and stripped it of all sense, taking away its soil and flesh and practical realism. Revolted by earthy paganism, it proclaimed that physical bodies were worthless filth, food and life were nonessential: what people really needed were pure souls, and they would provide a dying god whose death and consumption would give the people not food but absolution. Stingily, though, they decreed that he should die and rise but once (though he may be consumed over and over), lest he retain any connection to Earth and her seasons. And in reducing the oldest sacrificial concept in the human mind to an abstract, they also planted the seeds of body hatred, mortification, sexual shame, even ecological destruction, by devaluing all earthly life and its needs. We began to worship death. And we haven't stopped. "All god's children to be sent/to our perfect place in the sun/and the dirt" - our only "perfect place", our only approved contact with Earth, is the grave.
 
  
 
==Appearances==
 
==Appearances==

Revision as of 19:08, 22 November 2009

"A Place in the Dirt"
A Place in the Dirt cover
Song by Marilyn Manson
Album Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
Released November 13, 2000
Recorded 1999–2000 at the Mansion in Death Valley, California
Genre Alternative metal
Length 3:37
Label Nothing, Interscope
Writer Marilyn Manson
Composer John 5
Producer Marilyn Manson, Dave Sardy

"A Place in the Dirt" is the ninth track on the 2000 release Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). The song consists of only four verses and two refrains. While the instrumentation in the verses consists of only a synthesizer and percussion, the choruses are heavy by contrast. The percussion is also absent from the first verse, making it the most quiet section of the song.

Appearances

Albums

Versions

  • A Place in the Dirt — Appears on Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death).

Lyrics

    We are damned and we are dead
    all god's children to be sent
    to our perfect place in the sun
    and in the dirt
    
    There's a windshield in my heart
    we are bugs so smeared and scarred
    and could you stop the meat from thinking
    before I swallow all of it,
    could you please?
    
    Put me in the motorcade
    put me in the death parade
    dress me up and make me
    dress me up and make me
    your dying god
    
    angel with needles
    poked through our eyes
    and let the ugly light
    of the world in
    and we were no longer blind
    and we were no longer blind
    
    Put me in the motorcade
    put me in the death parade
    dress me up and make me
    dress me up and make me
    your dying god
    
    Now we hold the "ugly head"
    the Mary-whore is at the bed
    They've cast the shadow of our perfect death
    in the sun and in the dirt.
Retrieved from "https://manson.wiki/w/index.php?title=A_Place_in_the_Dirt&oldid=22500"