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"
Oh, all the words I should not know
Those doctors wrote on me
Swell up and from their syllable
Won't let me get to sleep
The sun will start late and clock out early
And I'll drive around and wait for it
Follow familiar roads
Emptied of every memory
Under a sheet of silence and unmarked snow
Then idle in some parking lot
Smoke half a smoke and ask
St. Boniface and St. Vital
Preserve me from my past
Repair our potholes, prevent plant closures
And if they remember me at all
Make them remember me
As more than a queer experiment
More than a diagram in their quarterly
Make them remember me
Those doctors wrote on me
Swell up and from their syllable
Won't let me get to sleep
The sun will start late and clock out early
And I'll drive around and wait for it
Follow familiar roads
Emptied of every memory
Under a sheet of silence and unmarked snow
Then idle in some parking lot
Smoke half a smoke and ask
St. Boniface and St. Vital
Preserve me from my past
Repair our potholes, prevent plant closures
And if they remember me at all
Make them remember me
As more than a queer experiment
More than a diagram in their quarterly
Make them remember me
Lyrics submitted by superficies
Hymn of the Medical Oddity Lyrics as written by Jason Tait John K Samson
Lyrics © MOTHERSHIP MUSIC PUBLISHING
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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According to the Weakerthans' label ANTI this song is about "Winnipegger David Reimer, who was born a boy but raised as a girl after a famous and tragic medical experiment."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
wow. quite the hymn, both in music and in words. not sure about specifics but it kind of represents that sinking alone feeling you have when youre being contained by a medical presence.
the last part, the wish to the Saints seems to be some sort of dying wish.
quite the song, the new album is fucking remarkable, but how could you expect less from the weakerthans?
The lyrics are St. Vital instead of St. Fratel, and St. Boniface and St. Vital are area's in the city of Winnipeg where the Weakerthans are from
I think it's maybe about John's take on David Reimer not wanting to die and be remembered as nothing more than a "queer experiment". He wants to be remembered as something else.
And, yes, it's not "Saint Fratel", there are two areas in the French Quarter of Winnipeg (I live here in the Murder City, just so you know) called 'St. Boniface' and 'St. Vital' (pronounced vit-ell). They both used to be towns, back in the day, until Winnipeg got bigger and they grew together, and they became a section of the city.
Still, though, that's an amazing line, and one I'll probably remember forever.
Then idle in some parking lot, Smoke half a smoke and ask: "St. Boniface and St. Vital, Preserve me from my past."
Oh how interesting. Thanks for the link to wiki.
How barbaric of an experiment.
Why do you think JKS is so obcessed with medicine?