| Iron & Wine – Boy with a Coin Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The whole song has a kind of natural, earthy quality to it. I like to think that the girl in the gown believes she is destined for a life of tears because she experienced a literal, natural omen, with the bird in the snow. It may sound silly that a physical bird flew up her skirt, but in my understanding occasionally birds are associated with ill portent in some superstitions. Superstition as a motif is reinforced with the boy tossing the coin into the sea while making a wish. Again, I find a natural, earthy quality in the textures evoked by the image of this shiny coin glinting in a patch of tall, dusty grass. Perhaps the overall theme has to do with religion, but more like the kind of primal folk religions that all cultures seem to have had at one time; the earliest attempts to understand a sort of ironic deity which created man and woman but left no explanation for existence as it flitted away-- the most natural sort of religion, superstition and folk belief. |
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| Arcade Fire – The Well and the Lighthouse Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I'm not quite sure how it fits in, but I was struck by this tension within the lyrics which I think is quite wonderful: The narrator falls into the well searching for "that silver shine," searching for light, and becomes trapped thereby, unable to leave. The "funny side," is that "resurrected," given a chance to seek the light at its apparent source in the lighthouse, he would find himself equally trapped-- "If you leave them ships are going to wreck." Those that tend the lighthouse, the very essence of light, and those that have fallen into the shadows seeking its reflection find themselves ultimately equally bound... |
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