| Iron & Wine – The Trapeze Swinger Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Its about regret. It doesn't have to do with that regret being spoken or thought of at a funeral or at death. It is about the perpetual moment and infinity of regret and loss. Each verse rehearses some moment that passed between two people. But told in a tone of loss and lament. That is why each verse starts with one person imploring the other, who has been lost, for whatever exactly the reason. As to what the specific nature of that reason the best we get--and all that is appropriate to know (since it is in life's ambiguity that its profundity is to be found)--comes in the second to last verse. The one asking to be remembered "seldomly." Though: I don't think that the "seldomly" really attaches, as a lot of people maybe are suggested, to some untoward gesture being rebuffed because one person didn't care for the other. The "seldomly" refers to his "coming up with anger" in response to her feeling their bond to one another has been like a "trapeze act" that was too tenuous, even if exhilarating, to last. It is the unexpectedness or the difficulty of that kind of decision that makes him "come up with [the] anger" that was made even more ominous--to the point of him now asking this part not be remembered but 'seldomly'--when the parking lot also happened to be filling up with the dogs pouring out of the circus (doubling the 'trapeze swinger' metaphor). This is the second to last verse because it flows naturally into the last where the literal episode of them being at a circus--compounded by her using what they saw there as a metaphor for things b/w them needing to come to an end--is blended with the other imagery in previous verses about heaven. The last verse is there to imply the infinity of the loss and regret (regardless of how close, in the present, the narrator is to his own final end). That is why the instruction is to remember this of him "finally,"--all his clawing, and effort, and hope, and trying or jumping through hoops, and all the sentiment. Which will, he knows now, remain frozen as a loss he feels so much so that even "at the pearly gates" he'll still, in a sense, be "clawing." How so? Because even there, what he'll do his best to be doing is to "make a drawing" of all these seemingly contrasting or even opposing pairings. These parings not only beautifully pulling all the metaphorical imagery of the song into one place, but doing so, even more poignantly, in service of what is revealed to be in the last line another (and the song's main) metaphor. Because all these contrasting and even opposing pairings are there watching, bonded to one another, in baited breath TWO "frightened trapeze swingerS" who in his drawing did, despite their fear, continue their dance despite all the odds. The "drawing" he'd make up at the pearly gates, in other words, would still find him "clawing"and fighting to show that their "trapeze act" WAS meant to last, a sentiment with which the anxious onlookers in his drawing--both G-d AND lucifer, both angels And their sinners, etc.--evidently also are joined together in rooting for. | |
| Bon Iver – Holocene Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
His own record of his own lyrics are posted at: http://jagjaguwar.com/blog/2011/05/bon-iver-bon-iver-the-lyrics/ |
|
| Bon Iver – Holocene Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
19 min ago Rated 0 rate down rate up I think Justin's explanation pretty much sums up what it is basically about. Life's moments/ages seeming each like their own epoch (or, equivalently, its own place). And I think the verses mirror this. There are three: each pointing to a different such epoch, although all cataloged in the same kind of extremely impressionistic way that all of the lyrics are written in. So they are hard to make out or make literal sense of the grammar of (more on that below). Nevertheless, it seems the three verses move backwards in time across three ages or epochs (in his life/in a life/illustrative of life). The first sounds like it is opening with a first line that is like a bit of speech either spoken by him or to him. Kind of like a relationship dying and someone saying “Someway, baby, it’s part of me, apart from me" and it being like a revelation (perhaps, just through being hit so hard by it or getting hit so hard with it). I think the rest of this verse then kind of paints some images of bits and pieces of whatever random things he was doing after or that occurred after (drank too much; lamented the loss/messing things up; was in Milwaukee). I think this first verse introduces the other thing tying the three verses together beyond "moment of realization--> aftermath of events". And that is the theme of holidays/special days. So this place/epoch is kind of tied to the place/epoch of Halloween. The second verse moves backwards (to this time, biographically, when Justin was living on 3rd and lake) and the realization of that house burning down and what that place and time represented. The 'holiday' theme here is in the whole place/time being "where we learned to celebrate". The third verse then moves back in time still further--perhaps, biographically speaking, to when he and his brother were kids. Again we hear of a holiday here: christmas. As for the chorus: it punctuates each verse. And it comes in after a lyric which seems to lead out of the verse by way of suggesting a kind of acceptance. 1. "Okay so I'm in Milwaukee off my feet. This happened. It's gone."2. "The place and time of 3rd and lake is gone; but I remember things like being played 'Lip Parade'. That is enough for me"; 3. "This passing my brother and my childhood. To remember it: to know it in memory is enough for me." And the chorus paints an image of a kind of resolution and acceptance with the significance of realizing the insignificance of one's own epochs (or their passing, or making too much of them). Exactly how to interpret all the word choice/fuzzy grammar is hard. But at least in the chorus the image I get is someone standing in the middle of a highway on the highway ISLE (though Justin misspells this in his lyrics, intentionally, as "aisle" like he does "acrost" rather than "across" in Perth). The highway ISLE is imaged further as a jagged edge/VACANCY (another intentional misspelling in his lyrics which say "vacance") covered over with ice. And so the image is kind of ominious: standing in the middle of a highway, cars racing by, on an icy concrete island in the middle of the road. But the person is standing there kind of free, with the realization that he is nothing magnifiscent, the epochs of himself not so epochal. But just ordinary like all lives only ever are. And so the one thing that changes about the chorus is that he moves from first having "strayed" to the highway isle, then to being "hulled" in it, and then standing "high above" it. In each case looking out , realizing he is not magnifiscent but somehow in so realizing also being able to see "for miles, and miles, and miles." Just beautiful. Great son |
|
| Bon Iver – Holocene Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
I think Justin's explanation pretty much sums up what it is basically about. Life's moments/ages seeming each like their own epoch (or, equivalently, its own place). And I think the verses mirror this. There are three: each pointing to a different such epoch, although all cataloged in the same kind of extremely impressionistic way that all of the lyrics are written in. So they are hard to make out or make literal sense of the grammar of (more on that below). Nevertheless, it seems the three verses move backwards in time across three ages or epochs (in his life/in a life/illustrative of life). The first sounds like it is opening with a first line that is like a bit of speech either spoken by him or to him. Kind of like a relationship dying and someone saying “Someway, baby, it’s part of me, apart from me" and it being like a revelation (perhaps, just through being hit so hard by it or getting hit so hard with it). I think the rest of this verse then kind of paints some images of bits and pieces of whatever random things he was doing after or that occurred after (drank too much; lamented the loss/messing things up; was in Milwaukee). I think this first verse introduces the other thing tying the three verses together beyond "moment of realization--> aftermath of events". And that is the theme of holidays/special days. So this place/epoch is kind of tied to the place/epoch of Halloween. The second verse moves backwards (to this time, biographically, when Justin was living on 3rd and lake) and the realization of that house burning down and what that place and time represented. The 'holiday' theme here is in the whole place/time being "where we learned to celebrate". The third verse then moves back in time still further--perhaps, biographically speaking, to when he and his brother were kids. Again we hear of a holiday here: christmas. As for the chorus: it punctuates each verse. And it comes in after a lyric which seems to lead out of the verse by way of suggesting a kind of acceptance. 1. "Okay so I'm in Milwaukee off my feet. This happened. It's gone."2. "The place and time of 3rd and lake is gone; but I remember things like being played 'Lip Parade'. That is enough for me"; 3. "This passing my brother and my childhood. To remember it: to know it in memory is enough for me." And the chorus paints an image of a kind of resolution and acceptance with the significance of realizing the insignificance of one's own epochs (or their passing, or making too much of them). Exactly how to interpret all the word choice/fuzzy grammar is hard. But at least in the chorus the image I get is someone standing in the middle of a highway on the highway ISLE (though Justin misspells this in his lyrics, intentionally, as "aisle" like he does "acrost" rather than "across" in Perth). The highway ISLE is imaged further as a jagged edge/VACANCY (another intentional misspelling in his lyrics which say "vacance") covered over with ice. And so the image is kind of ominious: standing in the middle of a highway, cars racing by, on an icy concrete island in the middle of the road. But the person is standing there kind of free, with the realization that he is nothing magnifiscent, the epochs of himself not so epochal. But just ordinary like all lives only ever are. And so the one thing that changes about the chorus is that he moves from first having "strayed" to the highway isle, then to being "hulled" in it, and then standing "high above" it. In each case looking out , realizing he is not magnifiscent but somehow in so realizing also being able to see "for miles, and miles, and miles." Just beautiful. Great song. |
|
| Josh Ritter – Roll On Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Yes a really great song. There is a great live version he did at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR3SQAGebCg I agree that it is about a relationship that has ended. I think the 'trick' or the sly, unexpected thing about it is that it begins as if it is going to be about his own redemption in the wake of a relationship that didn't, evidently, end well for him/the first party. ("West of *her* is a place...*I'd* like to go"; "West of *her* there's another place..."). So the first roll on speaks to that--to his/the first party's going to that new place, with other faces that he will roll on towards. But then right after that the third verse has him feeling some doubt and resignation where it starts feeling like maybe he messed up because her voice is still inside his head and trying to outrun her kind of backfired. And then by the final verse it is like he is making some sort of apology to her, thinking she must imagine he doesn't care if she too is "rolling on" and getting letters from a new "somewhere" east of him. But then by the final line, the final 'roll on' he retreats a bit further into resign and remorse and on the basis of what he might have messed up, wishing her well somewhere east of him. The final "roll on" is, then, kind of for both of them. |
|
| Josh Ritter – Roll On Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Yes a really great song. There is a great live version he did at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR3SQAGebCg I agree that it is about a relationship that has ended. I think the 'trick' or the sly, unexpected thing about it is that it begins as if it is going to be about his own redemption in the wake of a relationship that didn't, evidently, end well for him/the first party. ("West of *her* is a place...*I'd* like to go"; "West of *her* there's another place..."). So the first roll on speaks to that--to his/the first party's going to that new place, with other faces that he will roll on towards. But then right after that the third verse has him feeling some doubt and resignation where it starts feeling like maybe he messed up because her voice is still inside his head and trying to outrun her kind of backfired. And then by the final verse it is like he is making some sort of apology to her, thinking she must imagine he doesn't care if she too is "rolling on" and getting letters from a new "somewhere" east of him. But then by the final line, the final 'roll on' he retreats a bit further into resign and remorse and on the basis of what he might have messed up, wishing her well somewhere east of him. The final "roll on" is, then, kind of for both of them. |
|
| Bon Iver – Flume Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I think the key to the song are the words 'flume' and 'maroon'. A flume is a river or more like a stream running through a ravine. To be marooned is to be stuck on an island in the middle of a body of water, but in the bad sense of being trapped and isolated. I think he is contrasting these two images in a way meant to get at two images he has of his state of mind. The reason why this song is the first on the album, I'd guess, is because it establishes the two themes the album is about: being stuck and isolated and in stasis versus getting out of that through some type of catharsis and realization. Justin V. has talked a lot about how the album was recorded at a time when/as a way of dealing with the emotional stuff he was going through, coming off this long relationship, DeYarmond Edison breaking up, and his liver disease and not knowing where to go or what to do after that. He went back to Wisconsin and his father's cabin not necessarily to make a 'catharsis' album but to just try to find a new direction (personally, musically, in every way). So I think the verses and lines about "only love is a maroon" and the other lines/verses about the "she" are telling two different stories. The "she" (at least in this song) is his mother, but more generally his family and that network of familial relations and the love and belonging that comes from that source. But the "love" he is speaking of explicitly is the love of "Emma". I think the idea is that he is at a crossroads where he is starting to see that his "love" of Emma ate up his self and that he gave everything to and for it and it has left him marooned and isolated and trapped. The way he begins to come out of it (the overall story, in a sense, the album tells) is through the small step of returning from that isolation to the person he was outside of all the things he is understanding himself to have done and gotten hung up on Emma through. That is why he starts with the realization that besides being that person (meaning, it seems, someone left by Emma, someone trapped by her way of caring or not caring about him, etc.) is to realize/remember that he is also the son of his mother. He was a person before her and he was from Eau Claire, Wisconsin and there was a hunting cabin his father built, and etc. I think others are right that the "I wear my garment so it shows" is kind of like saying "I wear my heart on my sleeve". So this line is also, like the one about realizing that he is his mother's only son, a testimony to his realization of how he has been trapped by love (for Emma). Overall, then the idea of a "flume", I think, speaks to getting out of that state of being marooned on an island (of love, for Emma, so to speak). And starting to move again and to realize that one swim away and the like. One reason the song is so great is b/c with these two themes established I think he kind of mixes the imagery throughout each verse also. I'm not quite sure why he says "gluey feathers on a flume". At first it reminded me not of a 'flume' but of a 'plume', like a plume pen made of feathers. So maybe that is the set of associations he's working with here. Be that as it may I think the line overall speaks to the sense of being stuck and marooned by love. "Only love is all maroon" b/c it is like "gluey feathers" that keep you stuck and unable to make your way through the narrow channel for movement a flume consists of. Then after this he comes back to the idea of his mother /family/ that other network of his identity and being loved ("sky is womb and she's the moon"; "I am my mother on the wall", like in a family portrait) and then you get an image of being freed/set in motion again ("I move in water shore to shore"; though I suppose this could also speak to how he is marooned b/w two narrow shores if the line is supposed to speak more to the "being marooned" theme). Before the final verse comes back to speaking about both themes (love being like getting marooned and his mother's love/family's love being like a new birth/womb) he elaborates a bit more on the particular way love has marooned him. And here he picks up on the other meaning of "maroon", where it alludes to a reddish color like you get from rope burns. So it is another image of the way love (or thinking one is in love; or another offering a love like Emma evidently did) can bind/constrict rather than liberate. After the initial rush of drinking up all the water ("lapping lakes") around yourself ("like a 'leary loon'"), he finds only years later after it ends and he is still carrying it around like a weight that he is marooned by it not only in the sense of being stuck on an island in the lapped up water but also marooned in the sense of bruised and rope burned. Great great song. |
|
| DeYarmond Edison – Epoch Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Revised Lyrics: It's your sinking divide. Clock went cold and the readouts die Head ain't reading things right. We (?) malfunction blinking light. You're looking up at the waves. Peaks and bones have you erased. Surface gets farther away. Settling sediment sinks to clay. And your lungs start to ache. And your face picks you late. But before you fade away. Your sweeping for a taste. There's a flicker in the cold. Second chance to have and hold. Out with the new in with the old. The wavelength rests at its note. Cause there's been a breach. There's been washing and bleach. There's no lessons to teach. And the epoch is a leech. And it all starts to creep. The walls start to leak. So then remember your weak. It's more than a dream. |
|
| DeYarmond Edison – Epoch Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Revised Lyrics: It's your sinking divide. Clock went cold and the readouts die Head ain't reading things right. We (?) malfunction blinking light. You're looking up at the waves. Peaks and bones have you erased. Surface gets farther away. Settling sediment sinks to clay. And your lungs start to ache. And your face picks you late. But before you fade away. Your sweeping for a taste. There's a flicker in the cold. Second chance to have and hold. Out with the new in with the old. The wavelength rests at its note. Cause there's been a breach. There's been washing and bleach. There's no lessons to teach. And the epoch is a leech. And it all starts to creep. The walls start to leak. So then remember your weak. It's more than a dream. |
|
| Josh Ritter – Monster Ballads Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
Great Comments everyone! I think the clarifications about Cairo being a reference to Illinois (and not Egypt, which initially had me thinking this song is connected to Lillian, Egypt, also on The Animal Years) really helped in cementing for me that the song is more directly a retelling about travelling up the Mississippi in a way that emulates Tom and Jim's on that river journeying to freedom. I think the second major element though is the linkage between the solitary, alone-ness of journeying-- with all that it teaches you as you are left just with your own thoughts and aspirations amidst a world that is clearly so much bigger than you normally understand it to be when in the midst of your most familiar of social surroundings--and the solitary, contemplative aloneness that music can also bring on. Here, I think, the character in the song is doubling his own contemplativeness by both literally journeying on the Mississippi and doing so while attuned to the strange indrift of "moster ballads" that he is somehow picking up via his 'wire albatross' as they drift in. "They" being these monster ballads, this "mesa 'noise'", these radio waves coming in from miles and miles away after having been translated from what initial meaning they had as human voice and music into digital form as "ones and zeroes". But as we sort of learn and see, the amazing thing about them, like about the contemplation that journeying generally inspires, is the way they are translated back from "ones and zeroes" into meaning and poignancy (if that is, one can get that wire albatross working) once some distant listener travelling along can hear them again as more than "ones and zeroes" and here in them "sighing" and "smiling" just a little bit. And then to synch things Josh combines the two references he has been making to the ways in which we can be prompted to contemplate in the final version of the image of the "stations of the cross" which sounds now like a play on words, as if the lst time he mentions it the point is that these ballads that can be picked up on the 'wire albatross' are like different little radio "stations" on the cross of that makeshift antenna and not just similar to the contemplations about Christ's journey through the stations of the cross that the song's narrator was initially contemplating at the prompting of his own journey. The song is beautiful. It takes my breath away. Thanks josh ritter. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.