| Neutral Milk Hotel – Where You'll Find Me Now Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I may be biased by my own personal experience but I think this song is about the feeling of being hurt by someone you love (i.e. discovering an affair). Sometimes even if you still feel some love and that person asks you for forgiveness, the pain is simply too much and you just want to move on. This creates that bitter-sweet mood perfectly depicted in this song: a mix of rage, love and nostalgia. The opening lines are difficult to interpret, I think they just convey his depressed, solitary mood, but the refrain is pretty clear: he is the one that decided to end the relationship because he's suffering too much and he knows he won't be able to talk to her again: "But I let you down And swollen and small is where you'll find me now With that silver stripping off From my tongue you're tearing out And you'll never hear me talk" Maybe people (his friends and family) blame her for what she has done but this doesn't make him feel better. He doesn't hate her, he's just not able to stay with her any more: "Everyone barks and they are all still believing To tear out your heart would send all your secrets to me" The pain is so deep that he's almost afraid of her, and despite he still feels the attraction he doesn't dare to touch her: "Your teeth believe that teeth are for tearing Tear into me and the scent of you sweating smells good to me As long as we keep in our clothes" In his deep disillusion he despises the people that carry on with their naive idea of romantic love. "And out in the dark the world is still rolling Kids in their cars, cigarette smoking And all that they are just reeks with the sweetest belief" This is a feeling that literally tears you apart and it's difficult to understand if you've never tried it yourself. You both want to run away and get back together at the same time. "All I could want is silver and spinning Out from your arms and into the pretty pit of your heart So simply and softly we'd flow" The end seems to leave a little bit of hope... "I will glow Into you" ...but all in all it's a beautiful, desperate song and I can't stop listening to it, since I first herd it yesterday! |
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| Leonard Cohen – There Is a War Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think however many kinds of war are mentioned in the song the real one Cohen has in mind is the war "between the man and the woman". This is the most ancient and cruelest of the human fights. Men and woman are biologically different: we have different instincts and different desires and maybe we'll never be able to fully understand each other... still we are so deeply entangled! That's why most of the people prefer not to think about it ("the ones who say there isn't") but the conflict is unavoidable. A man and woman will never be completely happy together. They are always enemies and never allies. The only choice we have is to fight the war untill the end or to reach a compromise were both the partners make some sacrifices. Pretty much like a cease-fire or at least a stall. I guess the marriage is the most common and consolidated name for this kind of deal: - why don't you come on back to the war, you can still get married - The war is not bad all togheter but it can be very dangerous. If both the partners are strong and independent they can try to survive it but and many good relationships have been simply wore off by the continuous fight: - why don't you come on back to the war, before it hurts us - In the end it all comes down to repress our instincts (and live monogamous relationship) or follow them (and live an open relationship). The decision is up to us... The only important thing is to realize that the "romantic love" is just an utopia and the only possible love is this kind of "service" and especially always talk about it with our lover: - why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking? - I think it is really amazing how Cohen was able to condensate all this thorny problems in these few, simple but piercing, lines; leaving all the torment of the final decision to the passion in his voice. |
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| Sunset Rubdown – Dragon's Lair Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I like the idea of the complicate relationship but I like to think that the trouble is not just the trivial jealousy/unfaithfulness matter. It seems like the two lovers lives far away or anyhow they both have a very independent and busy life. He knows that she's the right one for him and he truly loves her, however he's not yet ready to renounce to his freedom ("the good fight") because in doing that he would die inside ("to say the war is over is to say you are a widow"). Eventually they're living this sort of open realtionship in a period of life in wich people start to marry and settle down ("So this one’s for the critics and their disappointed mothers"). This would explain also the "confetti" from the party, maybe a wedding. In this sense I would interpret also the refrain: the "scissors" could be used by her (Rapunzel) to cut her tress and let him down (end the relationship) but if she threat to do so he is ready ot embrace the "sword" - not to fight with her - but to face the "Dragon", or rather the beast that keep him always travelling. Either way it's time to find a solution to this situation ("a bigger kind of kill") After the firs impetus he sounds like he's taken by nostalgia (the song slow down) and he regrets all the time he wasted walking around chasing for something, for someone ("I kicked up a whole country of dead, dead leaves last fall"). Maybe he's leaving once again ("seen from the back of a train") and the dead leaves remember him of all the "memoirs of old conversations", the love letters ("papers") that seem so pointless now that he's experiencing the lost of her. But, in the very end I can ear a spell of hope in his voice, because he knows that she is "such a champion", the only one that can understand and bear his restlessness and his expectations ("catching the statuettes that falls from the pedestals I tend to build too tall") and one day she will help him to defight the Dragon. |
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