38. 10 Songs about Saints

It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City - Bruce Springsteen
Saint Simon - The Shins
Santa Maria de la Feira - Devendra Banhart
Saints and Sinners - Paddy Casey
Hang on St Christopher - Tom Waits
St Andrew (the battle is in the air) - White Stripes
The Spirit of Giving - The New Pornographers
I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine - Bob Dylan
Girl in the War - Josh Ritter
St Patrick - James Yorkston

I don't have too much to say about saints that is new and interesting. There are some great and gory tales of saints and martyrs which fill up the middle ages, a pretty large number of saints who really had nothing saintly about them at all. I know that to some people their Saint's Day is as important as their birthday. I was educated at three saintly institutions, so i suppose Benedict, Paul and Andrew are of particular interest to me. Benedict was a real and interesting character, other good ones are Dunstan, Augustine, Columba. Last night, I was told by an RE teacher that St John Bosco is a really good one from fairly recent times.
These days, as in the movie 'A Guide to Recognising Your Saints', we more think of saints in a secular sense as guardian angels, and of course we think of patient people being saints, which is a bit nonsensical really.
There are couple of my favourite songs in the list, particularly St Patrick and St Simon. St Patrick is, to me, a magical song from start to finish.
Sorry, I'm being very incoherent. I've got a cold and I'm so hungover I can barely think...
the starting point for the words below was Nick Cave actually, an appropriately biblical kind of singer, and it was written while watching a Leonard Cohen concert on TV - his work is similarly rich in religiosity. But it was helpful to hear how daft a lot of Leonard Cohen's rhymes were, so that's kind of what I went for ...

You're telling me about your latest greatest
who's passed and passed the repeat play test
the one you'll be dancing your wedding dance to,
my bare raised eyebrow marks the changes
in the chapter headings of your back pages
you'd be wise again to turn a fleeting glance to

Though I've nothing but admiration for
the heats of your grand fixations or
your constant wish to spit in the face of cliche
you must accept these praising cycles
this carousel of passing icons
often end up in prolonged auctions on ebay

This age gives breadth to every church -
each porcelain god left in the lurch
must cope with being the saviour that he ain't
If pride allows, it pays to be willing,
at best, to humbly share the billing -
we all need far more than just one patron saint

With eyebrows and lips arched and pursed
and due respect to March the First
I ask my lowly offerings to be shared
by all who've ever felt my awe,
these prophets I have knelt before,
all saints ever subjected to my prayers

So, friend, don't consign with such haste
each fallen god to wanton waste,
don't knock them down like suspects in Guess Who?
for flavour fades but may return,
a beloved saint you casually spurn
may yet be needed, one day, to bless you.