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"
The giant of Illinois
Died from a blister on his toe
After walking all day through the first winter's snow
Throwing bits of stale bread to the last speckled doves
He never even felt his shoe full of blood
Delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow
And he felt himself soaring up through falling snow
And the sky was a woman's arms
The sky was a woman's arms
A boy with a club foot
Had sat next to him in school
Once upon a summer's day they went wandering through the woods
They spotted a sleeping swan
On the banks of a muddy stream
And they stormed it with rock still it collapsed in the reeds
They lay out on a green lawn full of chocolate and lemonade
But under the blue bowl the giant was afraid
Because the sky was a woman's arms
The sky was a woman's arms
Died from a blister on his toe
After walking all day through the first winter's snow
Throwing bits of stale bread to the last speckled doves
He never even felt his shoe full of blood
Delirious with pain, his bedroom walls began to glow
And he felt himself soaring up through falling snow
And the sky was a woman's arms
The sky was a woman's arms
A boy with a club foot
Had sat next to him in school
Once upon a summer's day they went wandering through the woods
They spotted a sleeping swan
On the banks of a muddy stream
And they stormed it with rock still it collapsed in the reeds
They lay out on a green lawn full of chocolate and lemonade
But under the blue bowl the giant was afraid
Because the sky was a woman's arms
The sky was a woman's arms
Lyrics submitted by leonperkin
The Giant of Illinois Lyrics as written by Rennie S Sparks Brett Sparks
Lyrics © MUSIC OF VIRTUAL, Songtrust Ave
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
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Great version of a great song,
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Aside from the literal connection to Robert Wadlow... the song strikes me as poetic in a way that I don't think I've experienced before.
The first verse, a man so engrossed in his care for the lowest of birds (pigeons) that he does not even tend to his own pain. A penance of sorts. Dies in his duty, comforted so very deeply in the end by the eternal, who like a mother forgives him his sin.
The second verse, a child, who meets a friend who leads him astray to commit a deep sin, to kill the most beautiful of birds. And even though they could have lived in indulgence after that, the child realizes what he did was wrong, but in realizing this, the eternal, who like a mother, comforts him and gives him his duty (to right his wrong).
What I love about the song is how the first verse is actually the chronological future, and the second is the past, and how it just all ties in so nicely and so beautifully and sadly. And how much pain you feel for the swan. And how sometimes you live with something wrong you did for the rest of your life. But that there is a comfort that it can somehow be righted.
@mr.doodle I heard this song and was gripped by it, a bit. I pulled over my car and looked for some clues in terms of the meaning, I read what you wrote here and sobbed a good sob for about 5 minutes, snot and tears ... then made my way home. Signed up for an account here only to tell you this. I needed that sob. Thanks for your interpretation, it came at the right time.