Walking on the water in a sea of despair.
By night we slept in vans speeding across countrysides, the earth spinning so quickly beneath us that we could feel it rumbling through the floorboards—trying to keep ahead of it, trying to outrun the clockhands.

To be free in the empire of entrepreneurs and authorities.
To be lucid between the airwaves and sedatives,
To trust yourself under the tyranny of consensus reality.
To be sensitive living in earshot of the sweatshops, the stadiums, the slaughterhouses,
With the scent of blood cheap in the air.
To dream of beauty with the stars plucked from the sky,
The angels caged and the heroes demonized.
To sing through throats stuffed with the cotton of inhibition,
To write of grace with callused hands and bloody faces;
To dare to scream, and even cry, proudly, before the jeering eyes
Of the judges, the executioner, and the crowd.
To lie, cheat, steal, and betray as much as necessary
To be honest,
To tell the truth.
To be fearless: to move and follow that movement
Even into death, to live to burn up in the wreckage.
To give everything:
To kiss without apprehension, shame, or restraint,
To make love in the city of hate.
And yes, to be alive,
Alive in the land of the dead. Catharsis.

The Passion was recorded at Mars Studios by Bill Korecky between April 30 and May 8, and mastered in the Kitchen on May 11, 1999.
Catharsis appears courtesy of Catharsis. All music, lyrics, and artwork plagiarized from other sources and rearranged in an order all our own.
They don’t call us starving artists in capitalist countries for nothing. Thank you for keeping us alive.

Catharsis is an anarchist collective bent on the total liberation of ourselves and our world through creative self-expression and self-determination, the annihilation of capitalism, hierarchy, morality, ideology, and human misery in all its other forms, and—above all—the transformation of life into a joyous, carefree game, to be played for the highest of stakes. We release all our music ourselves and distribute it exclusively through a network of friends and colleagues. We organize all our performances ourselves or through friends, working to establish a cooperative network of autonomous individuals rather than relying on and thus reinforcing the chains of corporate control that presently constrict the arts in particular and modern human relations in general. We refuse to compromise with these assembled forces of selfishness, apathy, and violence, and insist that every day of our lives be an adventure unfettered by external controls or internal inhibitions. So can you.

We struggle for a day when art will no longer be just another commodity to be exchanged for other sterile consumer goods, when both the means of production and all the products thereof will be shared openly so that everyone will be free to be an artist and live a life based on the pursuit of desire rather than ever-increasing standards of mere survival. In the meantime, we do what we can to lead lives outside this merciless system of domination and exploitation as we plot its downfall, and hold in revolted disdain all those who apparently believe it is enough just to sell things and go through the motions of traditions long dead and dry (and thus hostile to all living things).

Real life involves more than a beating heart and a functioning liver, of course. It is something that must be chosen, chased, created by those who would find it. Yes, we are idealists, hopeless romantics (both hopeless and romantic), but this idealism enables us to act while others are paralyzed by their despair, by “realism” and jaded cynicism. We think we do better to cast our lot with the quixotic madmen, the poets of revolution and absurdity, whatever the odds of success or survival may be. This is a statement of purpose, and all such statements oversimplify, as do declarations and expressions of every kind; but the important thing is to speak, to act, to do something, and let the consequences sort themselves out. So if we live, let’s live to tread on kings, to break our bodies and our hearts to keep ahead of death, to dance right through our lives.

Percussion - Jesús L. Pecador
Strings - Matt Miller, Ernesto “Che” H.
Self-styled Prometheus - B.