| Porcupine Tree – Halo Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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You actually had a pretty good translation to begin with, but I wanted to give it a try myself (native German speaker). Turns out to be quite challenging to hit exactly the right "tone", especially given that the original interview was likely conducted in English and has thus been translated twice! "Q: In one of he tracks on your new album it says "God is in my fingers god is in my head". Illusions of grandeur? A: That's from "Halo", one of those songs I've written over the years which deals with organized religion. I am not a big fan of organized religion. In this particular case the lyrics are written from the point of view of a very self-rightous man as far as his religion is concerned. The type of person that would have you believe their life has improved because of their faith, something to justify a kind of smug superiority over you. One of my former friends became a Born-Again Christian. It is very hard to maintain a friendship with these kind of people after they step into "another world". They start patronizing you because they believe to possess something that you don't: Faith, Knowledge, etc. Q: The one true answer to everything? A: Yeah, exactly. I always considered it to be insulting (condescending?), but it actually happened to me with one of my friends, so that inspired "Halo". Whenever I had to deal with him he acted as if he wore this halo above his head, creating this sentiment of inferiority, that I'm no longer on the same level as him. He was completely infused with this notion." Cheers, Gunnar |
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| Pink Floyd – Sheep Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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hey cosmic, where did you get the idea that jordan is a city, a jewish nonetheless? first of all it is an entire country, second it is the river that runs along the border between israel/palestine and jordan. there is a figure of speech: "crossing the jordan" which means go to the afterlife, ie. to die. since this is usually a one-way trip, nobody knows what to expect when we die. the same way, sheep do not know what to expect beyond the "valley of steel". by saying "i've looked over jordan" waters refers to somebody who can look past the barriers and warns the rest of the flock about the danger. you could interpret this like the reports of people who have had near-death experiences and when re-animated have talked about seeing the bright light. i would be cautious about bringing this too close to the holocaust, since i think the lyrics are much more general and not specific to one particular human tragedy. it happens all over the place time and time again (recently srebrenica, rwanda, darfur, etc.). it is easy to get carried away into connecting this to the holocaust, since it is the predominant incident in the western world. so how about the "hooks" are simply the meat-hooks at the butcher's? then again, i've heard that there is a lot of dark fascination with the holocaust, and a lot of exaggerated speculation about what might have happened in terms of torture. don't get me wrong, i am not denying any atrocities having been committed by the nazis, but i believe they have rather concentrated on killing efficiently (the masses), and using torture only for getting information out of (alleged) spies. paracute |
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