I remember a girl so very well
The carnival drums all mad in the air
Grim reapers and skeletons and a missionary bell
Oh where do we go now but nowhere

In a colonial hotel we fucked up the sun
And then we fucked it down again
Well the sun comes up and the sun goes down
Going round and round to nowhere

The kitten that padded and purred on my lap
Now swipes at my face with the paw of a bear
I turn the other cheek and you lay into that
Oh where do we go now but nowhere

Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up

Across clinical benches with nothing to talk
Breathing tea and biscuits and the Serenity Prayer
While the bones of our child crumble like chalk
O where do we go now but nowhere

I remember a girl so bold and so bright
Loose-limbed and laughing and brazen and bare
Sits gnawing her knuckles in the chemical light
Oh where do we go now but nowhere

You come for me now with a cake that you've made
Ravaged avenger with a clip in your hair
Full of glass and bleach and my old razorblades
Oh where do we go now but nowhere

Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover make up

If they'd give me my clothes back then I could go home
From this fresh, this clean, antiseptic air
Behind the locked gates an old donkey moans
Where do we go now but nowhere

Around the duck pond we grimly mope
Gloomily and mournfully we go round again
And one more doomed time and without much hope
Going round and around to nowhere

From the balcony we watched the carnival band
The crack of the drum, a little child did scare
I can still feel his fingers pressed in my hand
Oh where do we go now but nowhere

If I could relive one day of my life
If I could relive just a single one
You on the balcony, my future wife
Oh who could have known, but no one

Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Wake up, my love, my lover wake up

Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up


Lyrics submitted by stanlavisbad2, edited by Mellow_Harsher

Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere? Lyrics as written by Nicholas Cave

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management

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Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere? song meanings
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    General Comment

    I do not know what this song is about and maybe my analysis is completetly wrong...

    I think it is a song about the lost emotion. About the dreams and the hopes, the love and the laughter that in time have been replaced by an everyday ritual of "doing our jobs" and moaning. He remembers the day they were in love and didn't care for anything else. He remembers the girl as an image of light and joy and now he searches for that girl which is no longer here. And he knows that she accuses him for that as well as he accuses her. But still they are in love or at least he believes so, and all they need to do is remember their love remember the way to be in love and playful again. That is why he repeatedly pleads "wake up my love..."

    For me this is a song of desperation and of love trying to surpass the desperation.

    But as I said this might be, probably is, completely wrong

    uodvraxzon July 20, 2006   Link

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