This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Houses iced in whitewash guard a pale shoreline
Cornered by the cactus and the pine
Here I wander where sweet sage and strange herbs grow
Down a crumpled sun-baked stony road
Dusty wheels, leaning rusting in the sun
Snuff brown walls where Spanish lizards run
Here I'm shadowed by a dragon fig tree's fan
Ringed by ants and musing over man
I'll unwind my old strings while the sun shine down
Won't climb any high thing while the sun shine
Formentera Lady, sing your song for me
Formentera Lady, sun lover
Lamplight glows on old guitars, the travelers strum
Incense children dance to an Indian drum
Here Odysseus charmed for dark Circe fell
Still, her perfume lingers, still her spell
Time's grey hand won't catch me while the stars shine down
Untie and unlatch me while the stars shine
Formentera Lady, dance your dance for me
Formentera Lady, dark lover
Cornered by the cactus and the pine
Here I wander where sweet sage and strange herbs grow
Down a crumpled sun-baked stony road
Dusty wheels, leaning rusting in the sun
Snuff brown walls where Spanish lizards run
Here I'm shadowed by a dragon fig tree's fan
Ringed by ants and musing over man
I'll unwind my old strings while the sun shine down
Won't climb any high thing while the sun shine
Formentera Lady, sing your song for me
Formentera Lady, sun lover
Lamplight glows on old guitars, the travelers strum
Incense children dance to an Indian drum
Here Odysseus charmed for dark Circe fell
Still, her perfume lingers, still her spell
Time's grey hand won't catch me while the stars shine down
Untie and unlatch me while the stars shine
Formentera Lady, dance your dance for me
Formentera Lady, dark lover
Lyrics submitted by ruben, edited by carloshenrique, arobert
Formentera Lady Lyrics as written by Robert Fripp Peter John Sinfield
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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This beautiful song leads one to all kinds of dreamy interpretations, of vampires lying in the earth by day and exalting in strength and power at night, of immortality and reaching towards great wisdom, and even the awe inspiring myth of Shiva and Shakti, where Shiva dreams the world charmed by the dancing of his lover.
But the reality is far more prosaic. Formentera is a small, uninhabited island off the coast of Ibiza near Spain. King Crimson spent time there, alternating between quiet wanderings amidst nature on Formentera by day, and partying by night on Ibiza.
And it shows that with art, you should never let any "true" or "correct" interpretation get in the way of your own, which may as well be reality too, straining to reveal itself behind the artist's unconscious hand.
@arobert I'm just glad that people are still listening. It is one of their best works, in my humble opinion.