Save us, Savior of the World

Who’s ready for a Catching Foxes’s Substack article about a song with the word ‘Antichrist’ in the title? About a month ago, I discovered Kishi Bashi’s "I Am the Antichrist to You" (IATATY), performed live with the chamber orchestra, Nu Deco Ensemble. Their version floored me. It beautifully blends chamber orchestra elegance with indie-pop vocals, exploring the painful reality of trying to love from a place of self-obsession. It strikes at the heart of what the worst parts of us want. Great stuff to think about during Lent.

IATATY begins softly, a subtle bass under delicate pizzicato strings that glide into Bashi’s haunting first lines, a twenty-first century version of St. Francis of Assisi's infamous ‘Who are you' prayer:

Who are you? Who am I to you?

Immediately, the narrator confronts his lover with these two desperate questions. His relationship is deeply broken. He wants to fix it, but, for now, all he can see is pain. I imagine his disposition towards this relationship is, and who among us is not, shaped by culture, actions, choices, experiences, mental configurations, and genetics. Like many of us, the narrator comes with good intentions. He would not be asking these two questions if he didn’t have them. Yet the relationship rots from within.

Things are so bad, that in the rest of the openings lines, which, with the two questions above, serve as the chorus, the narrator sings:

I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

The bulk of the remaining lyrics offer some clarity for the narrator’s assertions:

Lucid lovers me and you
A deal of matchless value
I was always quick to admit defeat
Empty statements of bones and meat

And my heart it shook with fear
I'm a coward behind a shield and spear
Take this sword and throw it far
Let it shine under the morning star

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace

Into your arms race
One for my heart and two for show
Three tears for all the souls below
One day we made them into figurines
Burned them all with all my favorite things

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

Our poor narrator pines for salvation that can make life navigable and sane. He never states what drove him to such place. What we do know is that he’s now exiled and desperate for an answer. Naturally, he seeks refuge in a relationship. The choice to admit to defeat seems to provide a direct route to fix all of his problems. He even ask his lover to "take this sword and throw it far." This willingness to throw away his sword demonstrates depravity unrecognized to our little buddy narrator. The sword, shield, and spear mentioned in the song can, as Tolkien writes in The Return of the King, “do what is in us for the [succor] of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know."

But the narrator is too self-obsessed to wield his weapons. He needs a fix now, so begs his lover to fix what he can’t. She’s a person with her own gifts, abilities, flaws, joys, and pain. None fo those things give her the ability to fix him. His unfair explications and her own humanity lead to more pain. Consequently, their relationship leaves a trail of collateral damage, burning both people and the narrator’s ‘favorite things.’

The narrator seems to reach a breaking point right here. Maybe it was the damage their relationship caused to others. Maybe it was what it did to each other. Maybe it was all of it. But its here, at the final defeat, that something changes.

The song shifts to a lush instrumental break. It starts with a Bashi’s violin solo combined with the same delicate pizzicato strings from the song’s beginning. The two two lovers seems to dance cautiously around each other, desperate to embrace without themselves or the other. The music swells toward a feeling of surrender, embracing something bigger than either of them. Gone are the anxious pizzicato notes; Bashi and the entire orchestra play as one. Our lovers seem brought and held together by something bigger than either of them.

As the music settles, the final chorus arrives:

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms...

The word "race" is now absent. This small change shifts everything. The narrator no longer runs into a battle; he embraces and experiences his lover as she is. He stops demanding she fix him. Or maybe he stops trying to fix her in order to feel affirmed. Maybe, just maybe, he’s starting to understand that the salvation he seeks comes from something much bigger than her.

Love destroys fear, and the narrator’s receptivity towards his lover’s opens his capacity to experience love. Love creates. An experience of love and a desire for more love creates a deepening receptivity to the healing that comes from love incarnate, Christ Jesus. Funny how love works that way, revamping our entire lives with one subtle shift.

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Hope you enjoyed last week’s show. It was a blast to talk with my buddy Paul Joy. There’s something about calm, intellectual conversations with friends that soothes my soul. I hope it did the same for you.

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What’s happening on next week’s CF episode

Gomer is back! We had a great conversation about the importance of focusing on the process, work, and life. Very excited for you all to hear the new episode that drops on Tuesday, March 18th.

As always, you can keep keep Catching Foxes a thing by supporting us on Patreon at Patreon.com/CF, that’s Patreon.com/CF.

Three month of support gets you some really cool merch, depending on your level of support. You also get access to the infamous Discord, where some very cool people hang out.

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This article took me way too long to write. I really did like writing about this. Thanks to all my friends who let me share and talk about the song.

If you want more Substack stuff from us, let us know on Patreon.