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Sea Shanty Lyrics
Repair the hull, replace the sails.
The monkey wrestles with the ghost
And a thousand pleasures form a thin veneer
Over lack of hope.
The captain was rightly murdered by the crew
But now they don't know what to do -
Drifting on the murky Sargasso of the everyday.
Work and slave and skimp and save
And you can buy yourself a bigger cave
And a thousand little cruelties we agree to pretend to ignore.
The ghost has got the monkey by the tail
And all they both can do is wail.
And you and I go drifting by the abandoned vessels of he everyday.
The monkey wrestles with the ghost
And a thousand pleasures form a thin veneer
Over lack of hope.
The captain was rightly murdered by the crew
But now they don't know what to do -
Drifting on the murky Sargasso of the everyday.
Work and slave and skimp and save
And you can buy yourself a bigger cave
And a thousand little cruelties we agree to pretend to ignore.
The ghost has got the monkey by the tail
And all they both can do is wail.
And you and I go drifting by the abandoned vessels of he everyday.
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This song has a pretty interesting symbolism. The monkey is man, or mans essentially animal nature. The ghost is spirituality, or more specifically, the soul as conceived by organized religion, in particular Christian religion. The crew murdered the captain when the rise of reason, existentialism, and secular science pretty much put an end (among “civilized” people anyway) to the old forms of belief. However the old social structures built by 2000 years of Christianity still persist, even though we often find them quite painful, “The ghost has got the monkey by the tail, all they both can do is wail.” But without a blueprint for a new kind of society, a new meaning of life, we’re left adrift in a pointless sea of consumerism, the accumulation of stuff our only available option. Who are the abandoned vessels of the everyday? It’s you and me, my friend.
I disagree with the specifics of your interpretation. I think the monkey is the animal nature of man, like you said, however I feel that the ghost is the spiritual side of man, the 'soul'. I don't feel Christianity plays a part in the song at all. I think it represents the battle going on inside all of us, the battle between our animal nature and our 'soul' nature. It all seems to be a take on what its like to have a mind, what goes on as we think and live. The two natures battle each other to try...
I disagree with the specifics of your interpretation. I think the monkey is the animal nature of man, like you said, however I feel that the ghost is the spiritual side of man, the 'soul'. I don't feel Christianity plays a part in the song at all. I think it represents the battle going on inside all of us, the battle between our animal nature and our 'soul' nature. It all seems to be a take on what its like to have a mind, what goes on as we think and live. The two natures battle each other to try to find which one is the true mind, but in the end, they both just wail. There is no balance between animal nature and spiritual nature, it's just drifting on a sea, encountering "the abandoned vessels of the everyday," society.
Now, I'm off to buy Quasi tickets for the NYC 12/20 Knitting Factory show. They go up for sale in..... 2 minutes.