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"
To live between a rock and a hard place
In between time
Cruising in prime time
Soaking up the cathode rays
To live between the wars in our time
Living in real time
Holding the good time
Holding on to yesterdays
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb
But the wheels of time
Just pass you by
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to brother can you spare
Another war
Another wasteland
And another lost generation
It slips between your hands like water
This living in real time
A dizzying lifetime
Reeling by on celluloid
Struck between the eyes
By the big time world
Walking uneasy streets
Hiding beneath the sheets
Got to try and fill the void
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb
But the wheels of time
Just pass you by
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
In between time
Cruising in prime time
Soaking up the cathode rays
To live between the wars in our time
Living in real time
Holding the good time
Holding on to yesterdays
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb
But the wheels of time
Just pass you by
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to brother can you spare
Another war
Another wasteland
And another lost generation
It slips between your hands like water
This living in real time
A dizzying lifetime
Reeling by on celluloid
Struck between the eyes
By the big time world
Walking uneasy streets
Hiding beneath the sheets
Got to try and fill the void
You know how that rabbit feels
Going under your speeding wheels
Bright images flashing by
Like windshields towards a fly
Frozen in the fatal climb
But the wheels of time
Just pass you by
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
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The Night We Met
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@[Diderik:33655] "Your a holiday!" Was a popular term used in the 50s/60s to compliment someone on their all around. For example, not only are they beautiful, but they are fun and kind too ... just an all around "holiday".
I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
Dreamwalker
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Magical
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How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
Blue
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“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
Don't think that the drenching irony of bringing back this lost gem from the GUP album in 2005 (for the R30 Tour) and then for the Snakes & Arrows Tour was lost of a number of us paying attention here in the good ole US of A.
The lyrics practically describe what America has been living through in the last decade or so.
The juxtaposition of a pop culture awash in stupidity and meaningless affect while soldiers come home and drown in their own shattered psyches, alcohol & drugs and (for far too many) eventual suicide.
We are two very separate and incongruous nations in that respect.
Neil was looking at what happened to those who lived between the two World Wars (often called the "Lost Generation" - a phrase used by Hemingway who, as another commenter mentioned, was the source of the album title) and was beginning to see parallels to our own modern culture in the early 80s and now the 21st century.
Considering the tone of his disappointment with what we've become (excellently expressed on Snakes & Arrows with Armor And Sword and The Way The Wind Blows) it didn't surprise me that the band played this two tours in a row probably at the suggestion of Peart.
What scares me is we have enough ego-maniacs who believe in "American exceptionalism" who somehow think that the "boom" will never go "bust" so we're burning America out as a world power. I think we're past the point of....
"Wheels can take you around Wheels can cut you down
We can go from boom to bust From dreams to a bowl of dust"
@atlbobr69 AND the boom to bust, bowl of dust is an allusory reference to the people of that generation who had settled in the midwest, over farmed the land and suffered through droughts. <br /> <br /> Oh the 'Lost Generation' is attributable to Ms. Stein. Hemingway casually borrowed it.