BUCK-TICK - BABEL (Tour No.0 Guernica )

Tour No.0 Guernica (Moon DVD version) Single: Babel Lingua Sounda/Victor English translation from This is NOT Greatest Site: Babel Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi Music: Imai Hisashi Dark of the universe I embody oblivion All things under heaven Gossamer grace in the moonlit night Flesh of the lamb And the wine crimson and red I want more I want more Blood I crave ah give me more¹ Tonight am I through Heaven towering Right to the place where you stand Call me Babel Pleasure and joy Anger and sorrow Unto the end of desire Call me Babel Love the pale moonlight² Caught in the Fear, if you...³ Fantasy, illusion you are Here or not here if I... I myself am nothing but a dream Oh see the void Split apart and soak me in It burns It burns How I thirst, losing my wits Tonight am I through Heaven towering Until I tremble and sleep Call me Babel Pleasure and joy Anger and sorrow So do I crumble and fall⁴ Call me Babel Love the pale moonlight Oh see the void Split apart and soak me in I want more I want more Blood I crave ah give me more Tonight am I through Heaven towering Right to the place where you stand Call me Babel Pleasure and joy Anger and sorrow Unto the end of desire Call me Babel Love the pale moonlight Tonight am I through Heaven towering Until I tremble and sleep Call me Babel Pleasure and joy Anger and sorrow So do I crumble and fall Call me Babel Love the pale moonlight 1) In this line, Sakurai spells the imperative verb “kure,“ meaning “give me,“ as “kurei.“ Though Sakurai chose to write the word in hiragana, when written in katakana, “kurei“ means “clay,“ which could be taken as a reference to the clay or dust from which mortal bodies are made. Paired with the reference to wine, I can’t help but think of this drinking song by Henry Purcell: He that drinks is immortal And cans’t ne’er decay For wine still supplies What age wears away. How can he be dust How can he be dust That moistens his clay? I suppose it’s a long shot to assume that Sakurai is familiar with a song like this, but he’s pulled out some surprisingly esoteric references to Western culture before, so it’s not impossible. If he doesn’t know it, he should. (Watch some latter-day pirates singing it here). 2) I can’t help but think that this is a reference to the famous line spoken by Jack Nicholson as the Joker in the 1989 Batman movie, “Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?“ What the Joker is really asking is, have you ever examined your own inner darkness, or entertained the elements of your own character and desires which you normally keep hidden? (Out of the “sunlight,“ as it were). Since this song is all about the way people succumb to their own worst urges, the meaning fits perfectly. Also, it seems that with this song, Sakurai has taken his usual vampire story one step further, this time using the vampire (who drinks blood and can only come out at night) as a metaphor for the way the human race acts like a vampire on the world. 3) This line contains a beautiful word play. In Japanese, the word I translated as “the Fear“ is “ifu,“ meaning “dread, fear, or awe.“ But of course, “ifu“ sounds like the English word “if.“ Sakurai juxtaposes the two to subtly underscore the fact that he’s talking about fear of death as the main motivator of selfish and indulgent human behavior. His use of the phrase “here or not here“ in the next line is very similar to the way in which he employed “to be or not to be“ in the lyrics to The Mortal’s “Dead Can Dance.“ 4) Though the Tower of Babel is never explicitly destroyed in the Bible, its divine destruction reappears in later Christian mystical imagery, most notably in the Tarot, on the Tower, Card 16 of the Major Arcana. Though one of the most feared cards in the deck, the Tower represents nothing more or less than the “moment of truth“: the complete shattering of illusions. Sakurai may or may not be familiar with Tarot symbology, but the shattering of illusion theme matches well with the lyrics in this song about people being nothing more than illusions and dreams. It also calls to mind another Shakespeare reference, Prospero’s famous speech in “The Tempest“ - Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.