| The Tallest Man on Earth – Criminals Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| "Miracle of gulls" seems like a key to this, for some reason. I'm having a lot more success with a thought track where this works on "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", but that might just be because it's a personal favorite. | |
| Mumford & Sons – Roll Away Your Stone Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Okay, so keeping in mind that that line goes "I will give them up to you this time around," and assuming that no song by Mumford & Sons would merely regurgitate boring evangelist ideas in meaningless variations...I hope and pray there is more to this song than a cliche religious self-conflict. "Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine Together we can see what we will find Don’t leave me alone at this time, For I'm afraid of what I will discover inside" Clearly the speaker is engaging some new curiosity. A self-exploration, with a trusted and (hopefully) supportive partner who thinks she knows where that self-exploration will lead. Perhaps he is a teenager with a newly mature prefrontal cortex, starting to set goals. "'Cause you told me that I would find a hole, Within the fragile substance of my soul" Ah! They're exploring their souls. Let's understand souls as our divine impulse to work toward, create and do good. The hole, perhaps, refers to original sin (which would make the partner an evangelizing Christian.) "And I have filled this void with things unreal, And all the while my character it steals" So he fills that hole with his own desires -- an ambition to become great; a dream. And he's following the dream instead of his "character" -- his values (See Macbeth for details on what happens when one allows this to happen.) "Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think? And yet it dominates the things I see" The narrator is looking up toward his high goals, but is intimidated by the black night sky, which seems to swallow those stars up. (See Macbeth for details on what horrors exactly tend to swallow up this kind of dream.) "It seems that all my bridges have been burned, But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works" A reference to the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The narrator has lost control over parts of his life, and someone's telling him accept that those choices are immutably gone, and to move forward -- by any means possible, toward his soul-consuming ambitions. Maybe it's best to think of the soul as a vessel, weighed down by a stone -- We fill it with visions and dreams, and it pulls us upward, into the darkness, toward them. "It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, But the welcome I receive with a restart" He doesn't want to go back home. He wants to start anew from where he is, as the concept of "grace" suggested earlier. "Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think? And yet it dominates the things I see Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think? And yet it dominates the things I've seen" A man rising into the night sky sees only darkness. But the low life he leaves behind is in fact just as dark. "Stars hide your fires," A prayer for protection from the dangerous fires of the heavens. "These here are my desires And I will give them up to you this time around" He's gonna entrust himself to the heavens and roll off the stone. "And so, I’ll be found with my stake stuck in this ground Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul" When his visions become realities, he can mark them -- "I made this." "But you, you’ve gone too far this time You have neither reason nor rhyme With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine" The narrator has a right to pursue his own dreams. His trusted partner's getting in the way. This is an ultimatum, I suppose... |
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