| Nirvana – Rape Me Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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I never cared much for Nirvana, but after just now watching the documentary "Montage of Heck" got greater insight into the pain and rage which filled Cobain's life and songs, and this one in particular. Reading several victims say that this song felt empowering to them has opened my eyes just a bit on it. It occurs to me now that perhaps part of the meaning of the song is that "rape me" is, in a sense, a self-contradictory command: you can't rape someone with their consent. That doesn't mean you can't hurt them, of course, or that the command "rape me" can even coherently be understood as a request to be raped. But to say this either calmly as he does at first, or belted out with his later painful screeches, is to reassert control and power in the situation. It also highlights the contradiction in the rapist's act: the rapist wants to rape, and can't possibly want the victim's consent, because then it wouldn't be rape (they don't want sex, they want power over another, power over the other's resisting will). So to say "rape me" is to invite a contradiction, as much as addressing it to "my friend" is, or to want this same violation "again." If you rape, you're not my friend, whatever you think you are; if you rape once, and are told "rape me again," you can't really be getting what you want the second time even if you get it the first. This doesn't mean that saying this, or playing the song, would be an effective way to make an attacker stop, as if they would find themselves logically baffled, unable to proceed. But I'll bet they would want the song/invitation to stop, as much as they would want effective physical resistance to their act to stop. The implicit judgment would threaten them, possibly even more than the direct statement "you're hurting me, this is wrong." It may not save anyone from attack; the song's not advice for how to protect yourself, or a tool to fight back with on the occasion. But it highlights--for anyone who will hear--the intrinsic wrongness of what is being done, the utter impossibility of consent or of making sense out of what the attacker is doing. It shows the wrongness rather than asserting it, in a very sharp, cutting way. Note that this is a speculation from someone with little experience of sexual violence, and am open to correction with anyone who knows more than I do. |
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| Heart – Magic Man Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| "winter nights we...played inside the months of moon."\n\nThis is, as far as I know, the only lyrical reference to the rhythm method of birth control. Which speaks not only to the physical passion between the lovers, but their relative naivete. (Or maybe they were using other methods, and found nothing rhymes with "condom." :-) | |
| Stevie Nicks – Enchanted Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| I think this is fairly straightforward. The narrator is a strong woman with a bit of mystery and depth to her (like, well, Stevie Nicks). Someone was attracted to her, but didn\'t persist enough to break through into her dreams (which no one knows of). He was perhaps intimidated by what he perceived as her "darkness" (but which is not wholly dark, for she contains "shadow light"--both sides together). She\'s sorry he didn\'t have the determination to pursue her, meaning not just showing attention but really delving into her heart to understand her, and he left her. She wishes him well, but this may be the story of her life--most men just don\'t try hard and stick around long enough for the reward of fully experiencing and appreciating her true self. They are briefly "enchanted" and see something in her eyes, but only perceive part of her, like a voice in the night, later remembering like she does only the dream of a possibility of what could have been. | |
| America – Ventura Highway Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| I\'m surprised no one else commented on what seems an obvious pun: Ventura Highway (a highway in Ventura CA, naming both a city and county west of LA) and "Venture a highway"--that is, take a chance on this highway, give it a try, have an adventure on it. Indeed some online lyric listings mistakenly list the second as the chorus line. It\'s obviously the first, as this is the song\'s title, and yet it could legitimately be heard the second way, or at least making one think of that reading. | |
| Genesis – Abacab Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[scott10187:39247] Just saw someone's comment that the correct lyrics are "Don't you think they'll find out," which sounds right to me on hearing it as well. So that line is less ambiguous, but still leaves it open to what "they" will find out. Yes, maybe that you're with someone else's girl, but maybe much more than that--that for all your apparently successes, you're a failure at heart, with something always eluding your grasp, something always broken even when you think you've wrapped up the world--you've just wrapped yourself up in cellophane, caught in your own trap. | |
| Genesis – Abacab Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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I agree it's about someone with a bad conscience, though I wonder if the "getting someone else's girl" is not the central crime, but simply one of many archetypical examples of ways a person might think he's conquered others, gotten the best of the world, etc., only to really have a gap or hole in their personality. Someone of whom we can say: if you want it, ok, you can get it, now you've got it. But now you know...what? The hollowness of the victory, because now you want even more? Or: what it's like to get this one thing, but nothing more, certainly not how to life a truly satisfied life without regrets. The illusion/game revealed to be "a reflection of someone else's name" makes me think of Oscar Wilde's aphorism that “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” (De Profundis) Put another way when you wake up "covered in cellophane," i.e., surrounded by something completely artificial and unnatural, which could even cut off your breathing. There's a hole in that too--but can you find it and get through? I love how several lines themselves seem incomplete, as if the thoughts themselves have holes in them, as we are told explicitly are in many other things. E.g., "Don't you think that by now..." That by now...what? (Something would have happened? You would have been happy?) Or one could also read the line as "Don't you think THAT by now?" leaving it unclear what THAT is, what is the thought that you might be just on the edge of having, which perhaps you haven't fully grasped yet? Either way, there is something which eludes the subject, a hole in the understanding which you keep circling around. In addition to the "now you know" line referenced earlier, where we aren't told exactly what is (and is not) known. Holes and cracks everywhere you look, as the first few lines assure us. |
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| Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[Endymion2013:38503] The bit about New York snow also reminds me of the quip used by Mae West (though versions of it pre-existed her remark): "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." | |
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