There is a point in One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 where the language of survival finally becomes the language of retaliation. “The Arsonist” is that point. The song is not simply about having survived an attempt to destroy you. It is about what happens afterward, when the person who has been burned decides that the fire did not finish him and that the scars it left behind have become part of his strength. Manson himself described the song as the moment when the narrative of the two chapters “crystallizes into a battle stance,” and, referring to the painting he created for it, said that the “burned scar tissue” had formed into armor. That description gets very close to the heart of the song. The fire has not disappeared. It has changed him. The title is important because Manson does not call the song The Survivor or The Victim . He calls it "The Arsonist." An arsonist deliberately starts a fire, and this changes the entire perspective of the song. The speaker is no...
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Throughout his career, Marilyn Manson has been asked by various interviewers about things he regrets, and in lyrics of his songs he has talked about both regretting and not regretting, but the last time he was asked about his regrets was in 2019, in an interview for the German magazine Numero Homme Berlin (Spring/Summer 2019) for which he graced the cover. I translated his response below:
Sina Braetz: Looking back, what do you regret most about your life?
Marilyn Manson: I regret that I was naive enough to let people believe that my kindness was weakness and that I allowed them to take advantage of it. Many people believed that I was actually stupid or naive because I was so friendly and they betrayed me. But that was my fault, not theirs. That's why I regret not having been competent enough to understand that my desire to have companionable friendship - or whatever you want to call it - to have friends or family, made me make a lot of mistakes that I wish I hadn't made. But I learned from it and try not to repeat these mistakes.
To me, this can be interpreted in a few relevant ways. I won't explore what it could specifically refer to, since he didn't get into the details. But I do think there is a lot of truth to it, and there are quite a few examples where I know this could be applied, both in his past romantic relationships and his friendships. It is certainly seen in the various accusations made against him in the past few years, especially when accusers have twisted the truth to interpret an act of kindness from years ago into a heinous crime that is absolutely baseless. And it should not be lost on us how quickly and unquestionably many associated with him were to embrace these accusers falsehoods when they became public, adding to the betrayals in an unprecedented way beyond what he was referring to in 2019.
Sina Braetz: Looking back, what do you regret most about your life?
Marilyn Manson: I regret that I was naive enough to let people believe that my kindness was weakness and that I allowed them to take advantage of it. Many people believed that I was actually stupid or naive because I was so friendly and they betrayed me. But that was my fault, not theirs. That's why I regret not having been competent enough to understand that my desire to have companionable friendship - or whatever you want to call it - to have friends or family, made me make a lot of mistakes that I wish I hadn't made. But I learned from it and try not to repeat these mistakes.
To me, this can be interpreted in a few relevant ways. I won't explore what it could specifically refer to, since he didn't get into the details. But I do think there is a lot of truth to it, and there are quite a few examples where I know this could be applied, both in his past romantic relationships and his friendships. It is certainly seen in the various accusations made against him in the past few years, especially when accusers have twisted the truth to interpret an act of kindness from years ago into a heinous crime that is absolutely baseless. And it should not be lost on us how quickly and unquestionably many associated with him were to embrace these accusers falsehoods when they became public, adding to the betrayals in an unprecedented way beyond what he was referring to in 2019.