This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
i wanted to live the life of a prince
because I thought saints were born saints
so indeed we didn't stand a chance
insalubrious offshoots of nature
with heart and mind of our own
all the daughters all the sons
taking centuries to unearth the creature
heralding a stage
where consciousness is higher
taken through a costly process
of success and failure
i thought saints were born saints
i looked in the dirt
and found wisdom is learnt
through a costly process
of success and failure
because I thought saints were born saints
so indeed we didn't stand a chance
insalubrious offshoots of nature
with heart and mind of our own
all the daughters all the sons
taking centuries to unearth the creature
heralding a stage
where consciousness is higher
taken through a costly process
of success and failure
i thought saints were born saints
i looked in the dirt
and found wisdom is learnt
through a costly process
of success and failure
Lyrics submitted by ADmatteo
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The Night We Met
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The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
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Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Gentle Hour
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Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
No Surprises
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Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Thanks for posting these lyrics, I've been dying to know exactly what she was singing.
To claim brain-shattering profundity for rock music lyrics is probably a fool's project but I'm with aytchohelelwhy: GOOD GOD. What this song evokes to me--and it evokes it so hard it has brought me to joyful tears on more than one occasion--is the painful process whereby we outgrow our most childish notions of morality, some morally innocent (and incorrect) idea of our own innate, untried goodness...this storybook idea that living a good life, being good, is and will continue to be as simple for us as following the straightest line. L. Sadier thought "saints were born saints", that she was worthy of living like a "prince" from childhood, but comes to "look in the dirt" (go through life and experience and contemplation) to reach the awareness that "wisdom is learnt." "Wisdom is learnt" is a gloriously simple idea: it's almost more of a mantra than an idea. But it's an important, consoling, and inspiring notion because it forgives us our missteps. There is no straight line we should've followed, only a constant, "costly" process of "success and failure." Attaining wisdom requires our mistakes as much as our achievements.
I think Sadier is saying this is true for each individual and their life's path, and true in a bigger, macro way, regarding the development of what is good or worthy of surviving about civilization, mankind, etc.
So yeah basically this is the heaviest and most brilliant song ever written.
This is the heaviest and most brilliant song ever and i too will cry when i hear it every now and then this song brightens my day when ever i hear it just all the wisdom that is shared within the lyrics I tend to write <br /> "wisdom is learnt<br /> through a costly process<br /> of success and failure"<br /> In random places that people tend to look like on my employee cup, school folder, and on my brake up tray simply because i feel it is a fact that everyone needs to consider when going through their daily lives and in any siduation
I will say that many of atlas sound's songs remind me of life but Quick Canal just tops them all for me this song is about learning what life is
"i looked in the dirt and found wisdom is learnt"
I believe he looks at the dirt because we come from the dirt... everything comes from the dirt... It's like that sudden realization that everything is connected and everything falls into place when its ready to whether it be good or bad
Good God, this song is brilliant.
i agree with you both that this song is brilliant.
and, argylecover, this was beautifully said-- "Wisdom is learnt" is a gloriously simple idea: it's almost more of a mantra than an idea. But it's an important, consoling, and inspiring notion because it forgives us our missteps. There is no straight line we should've followed, only a constant, "costly" process of "success and failure." Attaining wisdom requires our mistakes as much as our achievements.
Gorgeous and profound!
completly agree, to me it has a connection with buddhism.
I could see the Buddhist angle. The lyrics almost read like a summary of the plot from Hesse's Siddhartha.
I love this song. It makes me nostalgic for 80's goth bands. I could easily imagine it appearing on an old 4AD album.
Like the previous two commmentors I cannot help but to think about Siddharta and Buddhism. Especially this part:
"i wanted to live the life of a prince because I thought saints were born saints"
It kind of reminds me of Siddharta when he was living the life of a prince before he left and saw the pain and suffering of the world.
Also this part:
"heralding a stage where consciousness is higher"
Maybe this is about reaching nirvana or the highest state in Buddhism?
Finally,
"i looked in the dirt and found wisdom is learnt through a costly process of success and failure"
To me this is when Siddharta left and he saw the suffering of his native people and he saw that his purpose in life was not to be rich and be a prince but that he would have to learn wisdom through a process of success and failure and he would become Buddha.
Idk, these are just thoughts.
Definetly one of the deepest and most powerful and moving songs there is.
indieJay
I too believe that this song is about Siddhartha I like how you posted this to help bend my brain around the concept... Thank You
For years, I thought the lyrics were "I looked in the dark/I found wisdom is love" before very recently reading the lyrics "I looked in the dirt/Found wisdom is learnt"
But they're both great, and I can't choose my favorite. Great song, amazing lyrics.
It had the same impact for me. I shed a few tears, too, especially when I read the lyrics. It definitely recalls Siddhartha in the first two lines, as IndieJay wrote, and perhaps Samuel Butler’s Rasselas as well. I think the song has to do with how we incorrectly conceptualize our own natures and that the real truth resembles the asceticism of many Eastern religions.
I take the song in two parts: the first, from lines 1-11, ending with the first “of success and failure,” has to do with what the speaker used to think all her life, that is, that there was nothing she could do to be a saint, since “saints were born saints,” so she might as well “live the life of a prince,” a life of privilege, ascendancy over other people, and hedonism (as in Siddhartha). The idea here is that the speaker and everyone else can’t really change themselves or their own natures, that they were doomed to be what they have always been (“we didn’t stand a chance”), and were forever denied a higher state of being (sainthood). All she thought she or anyone else could be was an insalubrious (unhealthy) offshoot of nature “with hearts and minds of [their] own,” a step along the way as nature did its work to create true saints. Really, the only way she thought saints could be produced is to do is continue the species, so “all the daughters” and “all the sons” for centuries continue on “to unearth” (develop) “the creature,” that is, a more evolved state of being, and a world “where consciousness is higher.” “A costly process of success and failure” therefore evokes centuries of evolution or cultural development.
That is, however, until we get to the remainder of the song, where she describes the truth she has learned. The majority of the song is a repetition of these last few lines to stress their import. The song seems to rise and fall throughout this section, as if continuously building to apexes that reflect the continuous ecstasy of the truth she finds. She thought saints could only be born, but she “looked in the dirt” (studied the world) “and found wisdom is learnt,” that is, they can learn to become saints. “Wisdom is learnt” is, as others have said, both extremely profound and remarkably simple, and, as it is often repeated in this song and constantly rising in pitch and key, it is both a mantra and an almost religious ecstasy of enlightened truth. The second part repeats “a costly and process of success and failure” that appears in the first part, but in this context, rather than reaching wisdom or a higher consciousness after centuries of development, it can be “learnt,” that is, within one’s own lifetime. It may seem that the best lives we can live are as princes, but the speaker learns that we can, in fact, all be saints by studying the world, that the wisdom of a higher consciousness can be learnt. It is the realization of new purpose, the understanding that we can be the enlightened creatures we thought could only arise after the turning of a new age, that we can effect change within ourselves, our consciousness, and, collectively, within the world.