Late on a Friday, my husband went up
To the mountains with three friends
They took provisions and bottles of bourbon
To last them all through the weekend
One hundred miles they drove
Just to fish in a stream
And there's so much water, so close to home

When they arrived, it was cold and dark
They set up their camp quickly
Warmed up with whiskey, they walked to the river
Where the water flowed past darkly
In the moonlight they saw the body
Of a girl floating face down
And there's so much water, so close to home

When he holds me now, I'm pretending
I feel like I'm frozen inside
And behind my eyes, my daily disguise
Everything's turning to white

It was too hard to tell how long she'd been dead
The river was that close to freezing
But one thing for sure
The girl hadn't died very well to judge from the bruising
They stood there above her all thinking
The same thoughts at the same time
There's so much water, so close to home

So this is what they did
They carried her downstream from their fishing
Between two smooth rocks, they gently wedged her
After all, it was late, and they'd come a long way
The girl would keep, she was going nowhere
They stayed up there fishing for two days
They reported it on Sunday when they came back down
There's so much water, so close to home

When he holds me now, I'm pretending
Nothing is working inside
And behind my eyes, my daily disguise
Everything's turning to white

The newspapers said that the girl had been strangled
To death and also molested
On the day of the funeral the radio reported
That a young man had been arrested
I went to the service a stranger
I drove past the lake out of town
There's so much water, so close to home

When he holds me now I'm pretending
I feel like I'm frozen inside
And behind my eyes, my daily disguise
Everything's turning to white


Lyrics submitted by thunderball

Everything's Turning to White Lyrics as written by Paul Maurice Kelly

Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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Everything's Turning To White song meanings
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    General Comment

    I may be way out of line here, it could be my twisted imagination... But the line about "The newspapers said that the girl had been strangled to death and also molested" always subtly hints to me that it wasn't necessarily the murderer that did the molesting.

    And that three men in the mountains with bottles of bourbon may just have had another reason for not reporting the crime immediately, but wait for three days to get their story straight. For a small town, the newspapers could have only got their "official" story It's only after the story broke in the paper is the young man arrested. Did he turn himself in? And it's the wife of the one of the men that tells us "When he holds me now I'm pretending I feel like I'm frozen inside". She may know his dark secret.

    As I say, I could be way off, but this song always has a dark edge to me. Something even more sinister than the obvious.

    Loved the film Jindabyne too by the way.

    kamahl_o_koalaon May 27, 2008   Link

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