| Townes Van Zandt – Lungs Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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It's a cracking song. The best songs / lyrics / poems strike a personal chord which mean different things to different people. I translate it as a song about the futility of humanities / societies contradictions. Almost every line in the song is a contradiction / opposite to the previous line. Example: "Well, won't you lend your lungs to me?" "Mine are collapsing" (Someone is going to die either way you look at this and I'd rather it not be me) "Plant my feet and bitterly breathe" "Up the time that's passing." (What's the point of living / breathing in the first place if your so bitter about it) "Breath I'll take and breath I'll give" "Pray the day ain't poison" (Again, he's saying he almost resents even breathing, which backs up the last line) "Stand among the ones that live" "In lonely indecision." (He stands lonely and indecisive, while everyone else appears to be living) Second verse (amazing) is a dream about panning a stream for gold at night, in which he believes the moonlight on the water is gold, but when he tries to carry it home the moonlit water slips through his hands appearing to turn his hands "to butter". Again... a contradiction. The word "dream" is usually synonymous with success and yet his "dream" becomes a disappointment. and so on and so on, example: "Jesus was an only son" "And love his only concept" "Strangers cry in foreign tongues" "And dirty up the doorstep" Strangers speaking a different language are still spreading the word / love of God, but because they're speaking the same words in a different language, it becomes something "dangerous" or "sinister". But it's also filled with images of hallucination and dreams, which would fit really well with the him suffering pneumonia. What a great artist, to take pain and sickness and turn it into this. |
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