In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
I caught sight of my reflection
I caught it in the window
I saw the darkness in my heart
I saw the signs of my undoing
They had been there from the start
And the darkness still has work to do
The knotted chord's untying
They're heated and they're holy
Oh they're sitting there on high
So secure with everything they're buying
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
We wanted the union
Oh the union of the woman
The woman and the man
My grip is surely slipping
I think I've lost my hold
Yes, I think I've lost my hold
I cannot get insurance anymore
They don't take credit, only gold
Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see
You hold so tightly in your hand
And all the while the distance grows between you and me
I do not understand
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
We wanted the union
Oh the union of the woman
The woman and the man
At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss
Hey
I can hear the distant thunder
Of a million unheard souls
Of a million unheard souls
Watch each one reach for creature comfort
For the filling of their holes
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
We wanted the union
Of the woman and the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
We've done everything we can
In the blood of Eden
Saw the end as we began
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
It was all for the union
Oh, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.
The blood of eden keeps running through me
Running through my veins
The blood of eden keeps rushing through me
When I'm sure there's none that remains
The blood of eden keeps running through me
I can feel it in my bones
That blood of eden keeps rushing through me
Taking back what it owns
I caught it in the window
I saw the darkness in my heart
I saw the signs of my undoing
They had been there from the start
And the darkness still has work to do
The knotted chord's untying
They're heated and they're holy
Oh they're sitting there on high
So secure with everything they're buying
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
We wanted the union
Oh the union of the woman
The woman and the man
My grip is surely slipping
I think I've lost my hold
Yes, I think I've lost my hold
I cannot get insurance anymore
They don't take credit, only gold
Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see
You hold so tightly in your hand
And all the while the distance grows between you and me
I do not understand
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
We wanted the union
Oh the union of the woman
The woman and the man
At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss
Hey
I can hear the distant thunder
Of a million unheard souls
Of a million unheard souls
Watch each one reach for creature comfort
For the filling of their holes
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
We wanted the union
Of the woman and the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
We've done everything we can
In the blood of Eden
Saw the end as we began
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
It was all for the union
Oh, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.
The blood of eden keeps running through me
Running through my veins
The blood of eden keeps rushing through me
When I'm sure there's none that remains
The blood of eden keeps running through me
I can feel it in my bones
That blood of eden keeps rushing through me
Taking back what it owns
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"I saw the darkness in my heart" "And the darkness still has work to do "The knotted cords untying"
In this song and many others by peter gabriel, the themes of the intertwining and interpenetration of opposites can be found: the polarities of woman and man, light and darkness, insight and insanity, kindness and cruelty, agony and ecstasy, divinity and humanity, silence and sound, signal and noise. I'm sure this song has many personal meanings to him, probably related to a specific relationship and the difficulty and growth it afforded him, but he writes in a mysterious enough way that each of us can draw our own associations and meanings from the songs.
In centering this song around images of Man, Woman, Eden, Darkness, Uncertainty, Unheard Souls, Distant Thunder, Tenderness, Stillness, Bliss, and Union, there is fertile ground indeed to spawn so many meanings, one for each listener. For me, the lines I quoted initially, about darkness having to the work of untying knots is particularly interesting and meaningful. The myth of Eden is commonly called The Fall, and this connects with darkness and death (blood) and curses, but I believe peter is implying that there is something useful going on here, that these tragic separations can bring higher and more refined unions down the line. Here is my own speculation about the meaning of Woman and Man in Eden:
Maybe in the standard fall of man garden of eden myth, what was really going on was this: God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but this was just a kind of test to see if they had the spunk, courage, autonomy and initiative to become equal Gods with him someday. They passed, and in fact "The Fall" was really graduation from Divine Elementary School. History has been like Secondary School, in which humanity attains the awareness, social, ethical and technological sophistication and power to link together in a higher level of synergistic harmony, in which each autonomous human individual is also holonically linked and synergistically co-creating with all the others. So once we pass this test, in other words, once we figure out the social systems and psycho-spiritual development patterns to create this higher synergistic network of powerfully creative, equal, loving, harmonious, autonomous and freely interconnecting individuals then we graduate to full Godhood, and together create our universe and our own creatures. And only as we awaken to our collective Divinity will we realize that the Fall was in fact a graduation and our misperception of it as a fall was a kind of childish longing for the protection, safety and lack of responsibility of innocence. We have to get over our species-level Mother Complex, our desire to have some beneficent parental authority figure take care of us and make the tough decisions for us so we can play in innocence. Once we do, we'll realize that God as a Father has a truth to it, but now that we are mature we are equal to Him, and don't have to cower in fear from his wrath or enjoy the protection of his "omnipotent" but patronizing care. We take our place as adults in new relationship to our Creator, just as we as humans eventually take our place as relative equals with our parents once we completely grow up.