| Hands Like Houses – Wisteria Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I think (I made this interpretation up) that this song is about overstepping ones bounds, or trying to "fly too high". It begins "on the ground" (lyrics: scattered in the soil, finger deep, dragged through the ground") the narrator (for lack of a btter term) only thinks of moving onwards and upwards, in society or something, using growing as a plant for a metaphor (lyrics: We could think of nothing else but what our patch of earth contained... In tender ground, as bare as birth, a shoot emerged from beneath the earth.) The narrator then is talking about being on a tire swing (lyrics: Between two branches, a rope and tire we cast between two worlds) which might mean he has grown a tree, and he swings or moves ever higher (lyrics: I chose the air, chose higher still and left an Eden, found) Eden, found, might mean he had reached a "good place" but instead of staying where he was, he swung higher, and ends up falling (lyrics: But in abandon, lost my grip, and shattered, chose the ground) the narrator reached too high and fell as for the chorus, it repeats a question to "Mary"- how does your garden grow as in, how is she grounded, having found the balance and not reaching too high, nor remaining on the ground the narrator wants to learn her secret for the optimal balance (lyrics: tell me what it takes to come alive) The whole song uses a garden growing as a metaphor. Wisteria is a type of vine that can grow up poles, which fits nicely with the idea of a growing garden. The line "Mary, Mary tell me how your garden grows" is part of an old nursery rhyme of disputed meaning, the significance of which is unclear to me. |
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