What do Seoul and Sudan have in common?
Both start with an S
Deep as a virus
Little Mary, little Mary
From scratchless I ascend
Stamps tongue--swabbed
now embark for the Ivory Coast
chiming like mouse bells

BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM

at the birth of a vermin Holy Ghost
Stars led to sky
lash led to eye
herpes to clit
then stopped
Expect
I'm carried by lanterns
Expect
I will follow the aerosol patterns

Immunity
won't feed on the bodies
Bones closing
too soon at the tips
won't feed on the bodies

From the fat black crocodile on the sand bar
Can't swallow it then bury it
From the voice flooded semen clotting to paste
Can't swallow it then bury it
And the jigger raps pits
darkness long
Jigger raps pits

BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM

Shoes lead to shine splicing to swine
Strain after strain after strain after strain
Immunity
Immunity

Through the dormant wards and nurseries
a flugleman moves
In the lung smeared slides and corridors
a flugleman moves
And his tune rises on the harvest clouds of dust
Trading the wah-wah's for

BAM BAM BAM BAM
BAM BAM BAM BAM

Stars led to sky
toe led to thigh
tumor to breast
then stopped



Lyrics submitted by oswaldtherabbit

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5 Comments

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  • +2
    General Comment

    Seoul has been subjected to the outbreak of the Seoul Virus, Sudan and Ivory Coast to that of the Ebola Virus, both viruses being hemorrhagic fevers. They're transmitted from animals to men, and between men by physical contacts and body fluids.

    A flugelman is probably a flugelhorn player, a flugelhorn being heard extensively in the song playing a recurring theme.

    Now if anyone can explain what "jigger raps pits" means that would be most helpful.

    Beardedon June 01, 2012   Link
  • +2
    My Interpretation

    i know that the jigger flea is an african parasite that feeds on human/animal skin and lives in the soil, and while I’m not sure what the “raps” in “jigger raps pits” refers to, i’m fairly confident that it involves the jigger-infested graves of ebola virus victims. “darkness long” is obviously a reference to the eternal darkness of being dead and buried in said pit, and I like to think that the “bam” noises are supposed to be coffins being built.

    jcuefordon October 22, 2012   Link
  • +2
    Song Meaning

    I know that Walker has said this is a really difficult song to get, but I think I've got a bit about what he's getting at. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called "I Am A Strange Loop" which was an idea of what "the self" is; as he reasoned it, the self is the result of the mind looking in on itself infinitely, responding to and categorising its own changes. If you imagine that Walker thinks of the self in the same way (he's said that this song is about the self), the overall theme of these lyrics makes quite a lot of sense - he's comparing the way diseases react to stimuli and change infinitely to the way the mind can change infinitely as it views its own processes at continually increasing abstractions. And indeed he links the created form of humans to how they in turn respond to these diseases (herpes to clit, tumour to breast), as though the process of infection and evolution and immunity that take place in an epidemic are like the processes of a gigantic mind. It's still a really obscure song, but I get the feeling that's what he's going for; "Strain after strain after strain" is basically a colourful way of describing Hofstadter's concept of the self.

    MalusRuneon May 25, 2013   Link
  • +1
    Song Meaning

    From elsewhere.co.nz/absoluteelsewhere/392/scott-walker-interviewed-2006-loneliness-is-a-cloak-you-wear:

    "Scott: Cue is the one that I can't talk about really. [...] That was the one that took the longest time. It started as one thing then became a personal song in the sense of Self, not ego-self or knowable-self but in the way of whatever the Self is. It's a very, very difficult song and I just hope that when people look at it they see that it has the rhythm in the lyric and the rhythm otherwise that will carry it along, because it was really tough."

    Supposedly this song took the longest time to create- Scott started work on it 9 years before The Drift was released.

    Appers66on December 30, 2008   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    To me, besides the viruses and the self, this song seems to have a racist undertheme ( Jiggers that rap, spits, shoes that shine, birth of a vermin perhaps an illusion to Birth of a Nation, the movie about KKK)

    loginsrunon October 13, 2013   Link

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