| The Cure – The Hanging Garden Lyrics | 8 years ago |
|
PS: I think that to understand the meaning of this song you should read the lyrics of the demo version, which are quite different and show that even Robert Smith's words might be a bit misleading at a first glance, as they are not explicit ("animals fucking" might be a veiled allusion to sexual abuse by "human beasts"): The animal runs slow across me I'm so tired I can only fall The black is dripping In the hanging garden Please don't speak Blood in my ears and eyes like ice Don't move Why won't I move Why do I pretend We're made of everyone else I see you in my room I think of your friend The ordinary chokes me When no one cares Empty men You're so useless Choking under covers Stifled like a dead man Happy with the empty men In a small room Lash my face with glass Era away from the animals Still no closer Cursing my fingers like ribbon Like an animal swelling in sickness Sallow child, frustration and hatred Cutting my hair Like cutting life with clean hands Touching me A brother lies in shapes of angels Keep her away from my face Series Pictures of madmen color the walls It's all a waste of time Everything jumps once And I fall into the walls Covered like a madman choking Choking like an empty man Swaying out of time to be real again I think I should finish soon I think I should end Magic and dreams and the end of the world Choking on the covers That stifle a dead man Happy empty man Sit in a small room Lash my face and the animals sing Please don't speak in the hanging garden Every night in the hanging garden The animals drip in the hanging garden The animals drip at the side of the road The animals drip at the side of the road In the hanging garden In the hanging garden |
|
| The Cure – The Hanging Garden Lyrics | 8 years ago |
|
I think that the song might have meanings beyond the few words by Rober Smith, beyond his conscious intentions and beyond the limited and banal "animal rights" interpretation. The song has many allusions to suicide ("hanging"), love and death. It is as if the song of a man just after his suicide by hanging. Suicide I guess has been an obsession for Smith in the early years, especially after Ian Curtis' death by hanging. As someone has said, the "hanging garden" might be seen as an allusion to Babylon and I'd add, to this world, our transient, ephemeral life on earth. The allusion to the kiss might also be seen as the kiss of death ("Creatures kissing in the rain"). There are different metaphors of dying ("Shapeless in the dark again"). Death is not sleep, it is irrevocable ("In the hanging garden no one sleeps") A seemingly ironic view of the the lunaticism of trusting in forms of otherworldliness ("Catching halos on the moon / Gives my hands the shapes of angels"). The "animals" as all the living beings, including us humans as reduced to the biological being, that is as human beings that are dead as humans and only live as unconscious animals ("In the heat of the night the animals scream"), the reference to the "scream" might be seen as screaming at a funeral. Falling "into the walls": another way of representing being buried. Dying and making love as both ways of being in "ecstasy" beyond the earthly life ("Jump jump out of time ... out of the sky"). Other allusions to being buried during a funeral ("Cover my face as the animals cry"). Suicide and "fucking" as attempts to change one's traumas an one's identity ("change the past", "wearing furs and masks"). Wearing furs and mask is an allusion to dying of one's authentic self in the "theatre" of social life and in a world where human life is reduced to biological, "animal", unconscious life. In the end there is something like a prayer for avoiding to see the pain of universal death "Cover my face as the animals die" (this allusion recalls the theme of the other song "One hundred years" in the same album). |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.