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Long Slow Slide Lyrics
The lights are bright in the circus
The geeks and the freaks all light cigarettes
And laugh at your misery
While the weight of the curtain closing crushes your heart
The inertia of loneliness tears your flesh apart
CHORUS: It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide...down
Once the neon is gone
There is still that golden splinter at your side
His manners are charming, but who are you fooling
You are nobody's bride
While Bukowski's widow haunts each empty seat on the Ferris wheel
Ghoulish lovers collide
In a collage of kisses that they steal
CHORUS
And outside the window
The circus crackles and lurches with rings of smoke
You laugh half-heartedly at the punchline
Not realizing they've made you the joke
Inside my heart a war is raging
In regions still untamed
The worst fear I can imagine
Is for the mystery to be tamed
The mystery to be tamed
CHORUS
It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide...down
The geeks and the freaks all light cigarettes
And laugh at your misery
While the weight of the curtain closing crushes your heart
The inertia of loneliness tears your flesh apart
It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide...down
There is still that golden splinter at your side
His manners are charming, but who are you fooling
You are nobody's bride
While Bukowski's widow haunts each empty seat on the Ferris wheel
Ghoulish lovers collide
In a collage of kisses that they steal
The circus crackles and lurches with rings of smoke
You laugh half-heartedly at the punchline
Not realizing they've made you the joke
Inside my heart a war is raging
In regions still untamed
The worst fear I can imagine
Is for the mystery to be tamed
The mystery to be tamed
It's a long slow slide
It's a long slow slide...down
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I think she is basically in a carnival by herself, and feeling lonely. However, the carnival is symbolic of going through life without anyone. My favorite line is "Who are you fooling-You are nobody's bride."
i think she's talking about how she was lost so instead of trying to find herself, she tried to fit in and slowly began to sink down into that trap.
talking about the long slow fall in love and just because she is amazing, and CAN, she uses the carnival metaphor for this
I don't think she is talking about falling in love. I think it is more falling OUT of love. Have you ever looked at the person that you're in love with and you just get the feeling that they are no longer in love with you but aren't breaking it off for whatever reason? So you pretend that everything is okay, but every night the weight of reality "crushes your heart," and in the end, "you're still nobody's bride." And you know until someone decides to break it off it is going to be a "long slow slide," while the relationship loses its love. It's just a song in which the inevitable is obvious, but you chose to ignore it, and so everything just slips and fades.
I think the person is trying to find perfect love, where all the pieces fit together. He or she has found some pieces, but they never make a whole, so the person is never truly complete in the way other people "the geeks and the freaks" (who think they are truly in love) are. To me, the weight of the curtain is symbolic of life, and in this case, almost like an hourglass, like time is ticking, the curtain is slowly falling and you aren't even complete yet, and there's a chance you may never be. Maybe you aren't ever truly complete with out someone else to compliment and vice versa.
SIDE NOTE: Jewel compares "Bukowski's widow" to this perfect love. Bukowski was a famous poet and literary icon. He died years ago but his wife to this day, still feels a missing part, like half of her is gone. She was even quoted in August of 2000 in the Long Beach Press for saying "Every day I don't get over it, every day I cry. It's almost absurd. It's like when somebody loses an appendage. What do you do? The other half of me is gone."