Lacrimae (destroyed. 2011)

Lacrimae is where my sense of history falls apart. I should have memorized the scene that I named it after.

There is this a Latin quote which is ‘Lacrimae Rerum’ and it means ‘the tears of the world’. I am going to speak in generalization because if I try to be specific I’ll make a fool of myself. I think it is in the Aeneid, a warrior or someone was looking at a painting of a scene of a great battle and he was filled with pity and compassion for humanity, for the fact that humans live in this state of constant struggle and sadness.

So the expression ‘Lacrimae Rerum’ means tears for human suffering. Tears as in appropriate reaction to the human condition. I just like the title, and I think there is a Finnish goth band who are called Lacrimae Rerum as well. So me and the dark Finns, we like the title.

One of my favourite guitar player is Tom Verlaine from Television, and my entire life I’ve been trying to sort of play electric guitar like Tom Verlaine. And so this one, I think I was playing the riff from ‘Marquee Moon’ and then I was sort of playing around and I recorded a little guitar riff and looped it, and then was almost an effort to add musical compositional elements that didn’t fit. So adding sync parts that didn’t fit, adding drums that didn’t fit, and to try to take a whole bunch of slightly awkward, ill placed elements and craft something cohesive from them and that was the idea from the song.

Again, I’m not allowed to pick favourites, but it’s probably my second favourite song on the record because where it starts and where it ends up are so different. When I listen to the opening of it, it just sounds odd, melodic and winsome and then by the middle it’s this male strum and then it ends quiet and winsome again.

— Moby