All the Rowboats

A damn amazing song (but then, which Regina song isn't?).

On a superficial level, in "All the Rowboats", Regina seems to be lamenting for the timeless masterpieces that are serving maximum sentences in galleries which are likened to tombs and mausoleums in the song's chorus. It's definitely an interesting perspective.

However, I feel that she's also talking about artists who do not want to be ogled at and celebrated the way these masterpieces are. They want to share their art with the world but they don't want special treatment nor the celebrity status. They don't want to be cut off from the world. Their art is formed from their life experiences - from their connection with the rest of the world - and if they are placed in a metaphorical glass coffin, they'll forget how to live and therefore, they'll forget how to sing.

Another undertone that keeps hitting me is how those attending these galleries - the people speaking various languages - aren't there to experience the art but to merely view them, whisper their judgment and pass on to the next item on display, almost cheapening the works of the artists who put their heart and soul into their work not to have them be judged but to be "experienced". The result is a sterile environment in which these masterpieces are trapped to the judgmental of the casual onlookers.

I feel like I'm only scratching the surface here, though. There's much more to it that I can't quite articulate (the words just aren't coming) but I hope I can just click "like" on a comment where someone does articulate what I feel like I'm unable to say (not to discredit the various interesting views we have on here already, 'course).

I think there’s a message here deeper than our tactless treatment of great art. She’s lamenting our inability to understand/interpret it. That’s why she writes, “Hear them whispering, French and German/ Dutch, Italian and Latin.” It’s especially significant that she mentions Latin, which is considered a “dead language.” She later proceeds to say, “But the most special are the most lonely”: the deepest, most complicated artwork are the most misunderstood. Then, “God, I pity the violins/ In the glass ocffins, they keep coughin’/ They’ve forgotten, forgotten how to sing, how to sing.” Here she presents a picture of death. People’s failure to understand great art is causing its detrioration…we’ve reached the point where we can no longer produce anything artistic (“singing” is a metaphor for the creation of art). BEAUTIFUL song. I’ve just discovered Regina Spektor and have been listening to her songs all day in addition to hanging around songmeanings.net (because I don’t understand a lot of them, ha). I should really get back to doing my humanities paper on Dostoevsky…Ugh, procrastination. But Regina’s music is a worthwhile distraction!

I think this song is about more than just artwork, and things that you find in museums. It's about our tendency to keep beautiful or interesting things locked up, when they should be open and free for everyone to enjoy.

However, the tragic part is, while we admire and enjoy beautiful things, we also destroy them (the forests, nature, pieces of art, etc), sometimes purposely, sometimes not. So, it's probably best that those things are kept locked up so they can be preserved for future generations.

love this song,reminds me of the d.h lawrence quote: "museums, object-lessons rigged out to illustrate the unsound theories of archaeologists, crazy attempts to co-ordinate and get into a fixed order that which has no fixed order and will not be co-coordinated! It is sickening! Why must all experience be systematized? A museum is not a first-hand contact: it is an illustrated lecture. And what one wants is the actual vital touch."

I don't agree with the sentiment either,I love museums.

It's actually "hear them whisper, French and German", not whispering. :)

As far as a deeper interpretation, I feel like there might be a subtle observation on celebrity. Being a celebrity forces you to live in a glass case. The more special you are the less you are free to engage with others randomly in society and the more entombed you become. To an extreme, a person might forget how to sing\forget how to live because they are so far disengaged because their existence is one of preservation, not freedom.

This song strikes me as a lamentation that creation is a finite process and that when a piece is complete, it dies in a way. When a painter makes his last stroke, no matter how great the painting, the picture is simply behind him. Nothing to add, nothing to change, its fate is simply to exist.

like regina said herself, this is about someone who wants liberate all of the artwork in a museum because they thought it was trapped, and in pain. she does not agree.

haha that's my favorite part of the recording, when she pauses and says, "...I do not agree." very matter-of-factly.

this song is very straight forward...and i love the imagery.....its so clear.... the artwork is imprisoned for being great....it is paraded and chained..... and the meaning of art is to be free and art should be a release

but i stilll wonder if there is a deeper meaning??