| Bon Iver – Flume Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I've got to know this song, because of the new Peter-Gabriel-Cover. That is what I hear: It's about the love of the mother and the realization of an adult that this special treat of love is only present during your childhood. He feels somewhat of betrayed, because he might thought, that the love of an other person has to be of the same texture, but it isn't. It isn't like the garment his mother gave him, that defines him (as hers), creates the person for everybody to be seen. Love isn't as predetermined as it appears at the first sight: like a natural garment of feathers. At the second sight it's clued to a flume, the "non-natural", handmade core, (like the family, portrayed in a frame at the wall, for example). Love has changed (it's color from red to maroon). Now there's the challenge of activity. You have to choose, define and to build (glue), foremost it isn't indestructible anymore (that's the reddish ruse). The omnipresence of the sky and the implicitness of nature (a natural surrounding) reminds him to the lost love that once protected him in a state of unawareness and innocence. But the connection was determined to burn down with the achievements of adulthood. Now "she", his first love, is engrossed (like the moon) but he still yearns and mourns for the lost love. |
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| Paul Simon – The Boy in the Bubble Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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The second verse might refer to nuclear contamination. Maybe due to the nuclear tests in Nevada or even due to the core melt in Chernobyl (April 1986; Graceland album was released in August 1986; recorded till June). It was a dry wind And it swept across the desert it curled into the circle of birth: damage of DNA caused by nuclear radiation And the DEAD SAND FALLING on the children the mothers and the fathers: nuclear fallout And the automatic earth: the damage of electronic devices caused by the Electromagnetic Pulse of a nuclear explosion |
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| Regina Spektor – Après Moi Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood Apres moi le deluge, after me come the floods" Maybe you can think of taking it this way: Before you think this is right: Apres moi le deluge, after me come the floods" Consider that: "Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs When you are young, you don't know what will come. Take care of your body and take care of the handicapped, you might be in a same situation some day. Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls Take care of your soul. If you violate your soul today you will live with the concequences and regrets for the rest of your life. You might be broken when you're old. And take care of the old, treat them right and serious without difference. Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood Take care of your heart. ...(And maybe: you are mortal/noneternal) Short: Take care of your body, your heart and your soul. |
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| Genesis – The Carpet Crawlers Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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My version of the song: For me the story of “The Lamb” makes very much sense. Because of its complexity I like to add an essay just for one song: The Carpet crawl. Here you can find a short version of the whole story. First: “Carpet Crawl” (further: CC) is just a small piece of a bigger context and you can´t get through it by isolating it from the rest of the lyrics. There are a lot of relations to other parts of the album. In fact it marks a centre, the focus to the whole narration. Imagine “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”-Story as a double funnel. CC builds the connection between the two single-funnels. It sucks the stuff from one (out)side, the material world, through the “needle´s eye” to the other (in)side, your inner private world, where you have to deal with it and produce reflection and a reaction back to the world. These are principles of orientation and communication. To collect and select the matters of importance for your own unique sphere and to let them really in, deep in your mind gives you the opportunity to reflect yourself back to the world in a process of interaction. You are impressed and you will express yourself at the same time in an ongoing circle. The opposite of the double-funnel is the corridor. It is narrowed by (various) filters that brings you to handle the input in a prefabricated way. The carpet crawlers “just” heed their callers. They just crawling on the surface incapable to reflect or react, just following blind, led by moral, ideology, economy or whatever. They see a door: their goal to achieve in expectation of a gratification: acceptance, fame, richness, blessedness. But they are not able to see the tiny needle´s eye that is just open for ideas and interaction [and “closing on the poor” (in mind or spirit)] which leads you to an independent state of existence. “get in to get out” is an expression of universal meaning and can filled up with nearly everything. Between in and out you will find any content. “It´s over to you.” The content between birth (in) and death (out) should be life. But it seems to be that the crawlers bring just their bodies in and out. Also CC is a compendium of the whole lyrics. All themes the whole album deals with are compressed here in the center as if you watch a whole cosmos contracted in just one point like a singularity. It is the question about reality. What is really real? It is the question about to tell genes from conditioning. To tell truth from fabrication. Gabriel begins with a simple impression: “The wool is soft and warm.” (The clearest sentence of the whole story!) Something he can sense with his body. Then: The salamander scurries into flame to be destroyed. You can proof that with your eyes. But: In ancient times (say just 200 y. ago some places) people thought, salamanders are creatures of the fire and can´t destroyed by heat (so they throw them into flames ´cos they thought they were the cause of all kinds of burning). So you have to be alert. Who gives you the guarantee everything you see or you were told of is true? And by the way, why should a salamander scurries into flame at all? Next step is to mix it up: “Imaginary creatures are trapped in birth on celluloid” is a mixture of reality and fabrication or construction, the cultural reality we live in. You can divide it in: “Imaginary creatures are trapped on celluloid” and (real) “creatures are trapped in birth”. Trapped on celluloid means: it is burned in your brain by conditioning. “Each thought and gesture are caught on celluloid. There´s no hiding in my memory. No room to void” (avoid). You will not be able to wipe it off. It became a part of your reality. (If you “burned” as an Englishman you can´t be a German or more strange for example: Chinese; if you were 25 years old in 1600 you are not able to survive in 2008-society). As an adult, your conditioning became as real to you as your genetic code. “The fleas cling to the golden fleece, hoping they´ll find peace”: 1. “The fleas cling to a fleece” of course! That´s the thing you can watch, the real thing. The fleas follow their instincts to survive, a natural mechanism. To add . “hoping they´ll find peace” makes the whole thing absurd (or leads you to take “fleas” as a symbol and create a association). Fleas doesn´t “hope” anything at all, it´s an only human ability. But you will find more sentences in this song that are constructed the same way like: “pulled up by a magnet believing they´re free” or “A mannikin fears attack”. To compare the flea-sentence with the magnet-sentence shows you that humans follow mechanisms as well but here these mechanisms are not always natural, most of them are constructions of society the people not aware of (= believing they´re free). But as a human being there is a chance to break these mechanisms by awareness and then you got the ability to choose personal freedom. (leads to chamber of 32 doors) 2. Reminds to the struggle of sperms to enter the ovum. Why? Maybe just because “hoping they´ll find peace” describes a human aim of sexual motivation, that leads you here to a powerful imagination. [An example how our instincts are connected to our emotions and how strong they really are and it also shows you how easy it can be to “manipulate” people by using (or abusing) their instincts.] 3. The “golden fleece” is something like an artefact of an old Greek myth. (Look for it in Wiki) In ancient times people in east Europe used the fleece of sheep to wash gold out of the rivers. So in Greek culture the lamb have had another spiritual meaning as in Jewish or Christian cultures. So believe it: “This lamb has nothing whatsoever to do with Rael, or any other lamb - it just lies down on Broadway.” (find it in LLDOB-Song; liner notes). Means: LLDOB´s got nothing to do with religion in particular. Related to the Greek myth, the lamb is a symbol of wealth, making money. Members of Christian cultur tend to overpower the biblical theme (due to their conditioning!) according the noumerous mhystical symbols Peter Gabriel brings up here. The lower verse beginning with: “Mild mannered supermen.” dealing with a special aspect of our condition. The gender role and the relationship between genders. Superman is an idealised “person”, an imagination of being a man at all. It contains the double character of manhood: the strong, wild “version” fits to rule the world and the soft one (Clark Kent), the civilized (mild mannered), also fits to gain a woman. The double character is very hard to achieve and a cause for (self-)destruction (held in kryptonite = in the Superman-Saga a dangerous element of the planet Krypton which nullifies the strength of its inhabitants). Remember: this was written in 1974, just short time after the sexual revolution of the 60s. The virgins are wise and foolish at once. They are wise to accept the rituals and rules of their times to achieve their reachable goals but if you see it in the light of awareness of their situation as a depressed part of society they act foolish at the same time to accept their role. “Through a door a harvest feast is lit by candlelight;”. there is another door to achieve. By following the rules of the gender roles it is promised a fulfilled and rich future to come. “It’s the bottom of a staircase that spirals out of sight.” .At first the division of gender roles was a necessity to survive in archaic culture. To get rid off strong determined behaviour and instincts gives flexibility to adapt to chancing environments quickly. But it also means the newborns need more protection, care and time for learning (now they have to be conditioned to compensate the lack of genetic determination.) The necessity of teaching the young leads to a division of responsibilities between men and women and the hunter(men) -gatherer(women)-society. The Cause of the division never comes to awareness to humanity for a long time, it was forgotten (spirals out of sight - and out of the genetic code!) and the relationship between the genders get out of balance with the increase of power of men caused by their part of responsibilities. “The porcelain manikin with shattered skin” is a “fallen virgin”. With the “shattered skin” she lost most of the influence in her own faith in society. She altered from a “hollowed imagination” (“their bodies glowing bright” another idealistic vision) to a puppet, reduced to an “object” without prevention of society (fears attack). Today that seems ridiculous, but once it was a real matter of society and in 1974 there where still enough traces left in the minds of most of the people. Following this thoughts “The eager pack lift up their pitchers, they carry all they lack.” reminds to the fact that the content of the “pitchers” is pure and clean and so there is a chance to alter society rules and rites (or culture) in a very short time compared to alter the genetic code. “The eager pack” lacks of the right conditioning and so every time the “liquid” congeales, (which has seeped out through the crack) in the same old fashioned way as long as everybody arranges himself with the results. “The tickler takes his stickleback” could express two things: Tickler is male: go on this way and you will be lost in masturbation. Similar meaning as: Erogenous zones I question you- Without you, what would a poor boy do? Without you, mankind handkinds thru’ the blues. Tickler is female: Be aware of your power and choose (take) the “stickleback” who is willing to liberate gender relationships to influence and alter society and bring it to a balance between the sexes. Over the whole album one of Gabriels aim is to connect the male and (cut off or subconscious) female aspects of his personality to get out as a whole and complete person. To be able to act from an intact inner center instead to be (de)formed by outside influences. Leonad Cohen describes a similar dilemma in his song “Suzanne”. But while Suzanne is still an “outside” person (The reason of the melancholy in the song is the knowledge to miss something of yourself in her absence.) and you have to met her to get the feeling of wholeness, Gabriel finds his Suzanne inside himself in the figure of “Lilith”. The name Suzanne (Hebrew: Shoshana) means lily. The first time Lilith shows Rael/ Gabriel the meaning of wholeness [two golden globes (= closed spheres), (just) together producing a blinding white light (a symbol of their combined power)] he was shocked of its intensity and refused it on the first try. Later he overcomes his fear by jumping in the wild waters to rescue his own personality, his former very masculin periphery to the world named John. He rejoins with John but now something has changed. His connection to the world had altered marked by the yellow outline of their bodys (in expressionism yellow is the colour of female as blue is the colour of male - the lamia!). The former cut connection to this part of his inner self is restored, his soul repaired. You will find the theme in many later Gabriel-Songs again like “Blood Of Eden” or “Rythm Of The Heat” (you find that right after “It” as a demonstration of the new found power), Darkness and many more. |
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