The Death of the Rheingold

 

The Death of the Rheingold
This song was originally written in 1976 as a lament for a lost heart on the banks of the River Mersey, and was called "The Mersey Cannot Hold Its Gleam Any More".

About 12 years later, I was playing an online adventure game as Rheingold (see About the Rheingold Trauma for an explanation). He fell in love with and married a Rheinmaiden called Ithuriela but the relationship quickly went pear-shaped. I realised that the Mersey song could be adapted and vastly improved by using it to explore Rheingold's state of mind, and changed some of the words and added two new verses.

This was the last of 46 songs I wrote during a sustained period of creativity between 1970 and 1976, and for a long time afterwards I considered it my finest achievement. The music is very much of its time and shouldn't be considered as an example of where I want to be heading now, but it's still great to finally hear, quite faithfully reproduced, what's been in my head for 43 years.

Although it's a sad song about a character who feels he's reached the end of the road, the music itself is not dark. Rheingold knows that he is at fault and accepts his fate with honour and dignity.

I used the virtual reality scenario of an adventure game character to explore ideas that would be hard to do from real experience. I can assure you that I have never actually killed myself.

I've tried to teach myself to sing but I just don't have it in me to be a singer. This is the best it's going to get. Sorry.

 

Outside in the darkness, alone with the sound
Of those dark fateful rumblings pushing hard from deep underground,
The Siren sings louder, trying to catch the unwary ear,
And the Rheinmaiden has no words to stifle the fear.

Perhaps I was foolish, or afraid of the truth,
But this was not superficial like so many mistakes of my youth.
At the gates of delirium, which I never thought I'd see twice,
The Rheinmaiden calls the tune and fixes the price.

The oracle once told me my chariot should fly,
But her indifference has clouded all the sunbeams in my eye.
In the searing white heat of the moment, like Icarus I crash to the ground,
And the Rheinmaiden stands still and watches without a sound.

I stand on the shoreline in my own private hell
With the pride of the warrior smashed in shards at the place where he fell.
Amidst the broken icons of a world that promised so much
The Rheinmaiden withdraws her taste, her smell and her touch.

The waters cloud over, there's no sanctuary below
For this world-weary traveller who still has nowhere to go,
With his hand on the trigger and one duty still to perform,
For the Rheinmaiden offers no shelter away from the storm.

No echo or fanfare for the end of the game,
Just the gods of the river who were crying that I was to blame.
There's no turning back now as I reach the final door
For the Rheinmaiden cannot shine her light any more.

And the Rheinmaiden rejects the last of the things I stood for.

© Alan Wrigley Jun 2019