Falling Awake Lyrics
Feathers in the pages.
Monkeys in my heart
Are rattling their cages.
And another ghost to follow
Said "it's only up to you"
And that's the hardest pill to swallow.
You live on what they sent you
And you know they're gonna use
The things you love against you
One foot in the shower
There's never time to save
You're paying by the hour
Falling awake
And that's just the way it goes
Aware of the danger
Of riding in the cars
Taking candy from strangers
Never out of pocket
I'm supersonic man
Do you wanna buy a rocket?
Falling awake, falling awake
Oh that's just the way it goes
Falling awake, falling awake
Feathers in the pages
Monkeys in my heart
Are rattling their cages
I could learn to run the hustle
If I only had the brains
The money or the muscle
I think that japatterson made an interesting point. When you're going to sleep, you start thinking about things, and just how much they seemingly suck. You think about all of the stresses of life. The first paragraph supports that notion.
That said, it could be that the song is more about struggles in life in general, and though you're not exactly waking up to them happily, you're sort of falling awake to the the struggles and stresses.
Some of the lines themselves are just awesome.
Said "it's only up to you" And that's the hardest pill to swallow.
That's pretty self-explanatory, but pressure of your own life, and knowing that it's you that has to alleviate it is the hardest thing to deal with.
One foot in the grave One foot in the shower
I'm not sure what his interpretation was, but to me, this means that the struggles are killing him, but he still keeps going. The shower just is an example.
I could learn to play the game I could learn to run the hustle If I only had the brains The money or the muscle
He doesn't think he has what it takes to deal with these struggles.
Monkeys in my heart Are rattling their cages.
Pretty clear metaphor, but it's a clever way of saying that his emotions are driving him crazy. It does sort of feel that way sometimes.
This is really a fantastic song. I only started listening to it about a week ago, as I'm a Gary Jules fan, but I don't check up on his music that often. I've listened to it so many times since then. It's just awesome.
People never truly appreciate their life, we just fall in place, like robots. This song is not the first to recognize it either. Dave Matthews' song, Ants Marching parallels our life to ants, just doing the same thing over and over. Thorton Wilder, a famous American playwrite also comments on how we do not appreciate our life to the fullest. Its easy to get into routine. Regardless of age, routine is the easiest way to survive life. Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready for work, go to work, come home, eat dinner, help around the house, watch tv, prepare for next day, sleep. The life we live in, where we always must work to survive has us always stuck in routines. Having the same arguments about the bills and the car and whatever there is to argue about. We never call our parents to say we love them, knowing we'll just get caught up in an annoying conversation that can be put off till the next holliday. We don't resolve our petty fights with our sister, just because we know we have forever to resolve the conflict. The problem with this is that life gets in the way. This song takes the idea of us just being asleep our lives to another level. Something happens, and we fall awake. We finally realize that life is not always the same. That life has its curveballs. Some one dies. As shown in Grey's when this song is played, George's dad dies. "the hardest pill to swallow" This excellent and simple song by Gary Jules portrays the idea that we are asleep our lives, and then something happens, horrible, and we fall awake. It is not pleasent. We do not rise awake, we do not become awake, we fall. We loose control of our life, we stumble, and we fall into our horrible reality. The songs lines are pretty basic I thought, and easily appliable to my opinion of the song's meaning, though the one line, "do you wanna buy a rocket?" bothered me. I really liked the line, but I felt if it meant something then just random babble, or even if it was meant to be random babble, I could get the full experience of the line. Sure, it rhymes with pocket, but I think what it means is that, when these horrible things happen, we do not want to be in our reality. We want to travel far away to "a far distant town on an island in the blue bay" as Ingrid Michaelson, another star of Grey's music, would say. We want our rocket to take us out of our reality and pain we have. Another line that just blows me away is "one foot in the grave, the other in the shower" One foot in the grave is a common phrase meaning close to death. Though, as he feels close to dying, like he wants to die, he knows that he also wants to wash away everything and start a new day, and that, he will get over this incident, this tradjedy. Well thats my opinion. I hope you read it, and I hope you care enough to comment about it, regardless of if you agree or disagree.
Beautiful song. Heard it on Grey's Anatomy.
I'll post what I think when I listen to it more, and break it down.
I think it's about that weird place inbetween being asleep and waking up. I don't know, the lyrics just don't really make any sense and usually dreams do not. It played when George's dad died so now this song makes me cry everytime I hear it.
I sat through an hour of that tv drama crap once, and all I got out of it was I found this song. Actually, that was a pretty good sacrafice.
Gary Jules is pretty impressive. I was never really impressed with "Mad World" (love DD), but this song is on a whole other level.
I agree the time that this may be occurring in is the time of day before falling or sleep but also is like any time of day where the thinks that bother you creep into and absorb you thoughts.
Things you can really do anything about and you continue to move forward "one foot in the grave one in the shower" It is sad for sure.
I think this song is about the stress and tolls on a person. When you cant sleep, you think about everything you need to do. Falling Awake to me refers to the feeling of free falling when you sleep and you wake up with your hands in front of you.
I think that japatterson made an interesting point. When you're going to sleep, you start thinking about things, and just how much they seemingly suck. You think about all of the stresses of life. The first paragraph supports that notion.
That said, it could be that the song is more about struggles in life in general, and though you're not exactly waking up to them happily, you're sort of falling awake to the the struggles and stresses.
Some of the lines themselves are just awesome.
Said "it's only up to you" And that's the hardest pill to swallow.
That's pretty self-explanatory, but pressure of your own life, and knowing that it's you that has to alleviate it is the hardest thing to deal with.
One foot in the grave One foot in the shower
I'm not sure what his interpretation was, but to me, this means that the struggles are killing him, but he still keeps going. The shower just is an example.
I could learn to play the game I could learn to run the hustle If I only had the brains The money or the muscle
He doesn't think he has what it takes to deal with these struggles.
Monkeys in my heart Are rattling their cages.
Pretty clear metaphor, but it's a clever way of saying that his emotions are driving him crazy. It does sort of feel that way sometimes.
This is really a fantastic song. I only started listening to it about a week ago, as I'm a Gary Jules fan, but I don't check up on his music that often. I've listened to it so many times since then. It's just awesome.
could "found a way to blue" be a reference to the nick drake song?
When I hear this song I think about my two brothers that passed. The way most of my life I was asleep not knowing how death felt and once they passed my life now feels like I'm falling awake