| Dave Matthews Band – The Maker Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| @[harpcat:15698] - yeah, how typical: your quest to be a better person is all about YOU. | |
| Daniel Lanois – The Maker Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Sorry - my first line "lively" should read "lovely!" | |
| Daniel Lanois – The Maker Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Yes, this is truly a brilliant, insightful and lively song with obvious deep personal meaning to both Lanois and anyone who has had to trod the path of sin and lived long enough to regret and try to address it. That said, a few of my interpretations: - I've run a twisted mile" refers to his own erroneous and lost life; could be the typical modern life of someone who mocks moral values, becomes involved in addiction, exploitation of others in relationships, etc. - how can "sleep" bend and break his body? Because the sleep he refers to is what I just wrote of in the first point: self-destruction resulting from the "sleep" of his blindness to all the self-indulgence in everything that was bad for him both physically and spiritually. The fog in his eyes, the fear in his life that kept him from feeling. I see people like him in the streets of my city every time I leave my home. - "working in the fields (Plains?) of Abraham," dovetails with other songs on the album, "O Marie" and "Jolie Louise," both about a man involved in a life of hard physical labour, in one case ending in alcoholism, spousal abuse, divorce and permanent solitude and bitterness. The plains of Abraham are of course in Quebec and while they might symbolize the loss of French sovereignty to some Quebecois, I think it is more relevant here to just mention the way it ties in with our other first-person narratives of the man working the tobacco fields etc. And there is redemption in the verse, because he can't turn his head away from the poverty and suffering of his fellow labourers - so whether or not he knew it at the time, he was not a stranger "in the HANDS" of the Maker - he was a useful tool in God's hands in acknowledging the value of other people. - In the final verse he is speaking to Jean-Baptiste - John the Baptist - directly, asking if he has seen the homeless daughters with their broken wings. Hearing this many years after release I was immediately reminded of the Salvation Army campaign to help prostitutes leave the streets. It may refer specifically to Eve and the Magdalene, I have no problem with that idea, but feel it is more general. Then we have Aaron Neville singing solo for the only time in the song, therefore representing John responding. He is a mystic and so gives a cryptic answer; instead of a direct response, he states that he has seen the flaming swords (placed by God along with the Cherubim to guard the way to the Tree of Life) "over East of Eden." I don't why everyone misses this, but East of Eden is where Cain and his family were banished to the land of Nod. So we have two concepts from Genesis tied together here, the flaming sword and the terrible sin of Cain and its punishment. John has answered the question about the homeless daughters by reminding the singer of the unavoidable painful consequences of a life immersed in error and blindness. At the end of the day it's a beautiful song no matter what Daniel Lanois intended. The one thing I'd have different is the unnecessary blues-based guitar noodling, it adds nothing to a lovely ballad that would be even prettier without it. |
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| Dave Matthews Band – The Maker Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Well, what can you expect from people who think the DMB version is in any way superior to that of the actual WRITER OF THE SONG, a man who has produced U2 and Brian Eno albums? DMB is about chops, not emotions - a wanker's band of the most obvious and rejectable kind. Who gives a damn whether or not Wooten is the "world's best bass player" - which is and always has been the kind of thing someone with the mentality of a a teenage rock nerd would say, regardless of age? How sad: 4 pages of this tripe, and only three comments at the page about the original. Time to rectify that and at least make it 4. |
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