| Joe Pug – Hymn #101 Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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I love the pattern that the verse structure gives here: there’s an introduction couple couplets explaining his purpose, and then a third couplet, a sort of lesson from a different period in the narrator’s life. To me, the first verse feels like a scene from a funeral, with an overdressed crowd, and an out-of-place sense of the religion of the event feeling like wishes. The next four verses feel like the narrator finding his place in the world. He shows up with his lazy horses, which feel like an inheritance he intends to build a rural life with. He’s the wide eyed young person, interested in the essentials of who he is. Then he begins to want, and finds that desire makes him desirable. He finds himself broke drunk, and avoiding the consequences of his actions by moving on. He falls in with greedy people, but learns that the value of money can’t fulfill him truely, and that his own value is diminished by prioritizing wealth. He becomes disillusioned, hangs with other poor people, accepting gifts and drugs. He recognizes his greed, in “ransack and spill.” And then there’s “I’ve come to take the harvest for the seed.” He sings it the same twice which, for me, has it meaning two different things: that he is wasting the resources of the future, and that he then comes to recognize that the resources of the present could build more in the future. Then he meets someone special, which feels like the result of planting seeds, finding them in a manger. It uses language from the nativity story, but feels like a romance; meeting someone also rural and poor who holds you. Feeling like it was destiny that you met. Then the lovers find boundaries. The narrator is resistant to complaint, but loves to hear your music. He’s moving on, but there’s still love there. There’s so much there, and you can really feel it in the way Pug sings “I mean so many things.” In the end, the narrator sees that he’s been stubborn and entitled. He’s changed so much, and wonders: when he dies, will anyone claim him? Will that love have endured through his rambling? |
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