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Like Blood Does Lyrics

Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull
I resigned myself to all the disappearance
I was sure the cops would come calling
Some sick shivering morning

I live in Newark now where cars speed away
And weekend freebasers bury their stems
In shaded groves and muted clearings

In Philadelphia, we didn't know
Clammy hands and beaming thresholds

And I'm visited by naked reality
In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me
And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them

Having hitched across America
Like an itinerant laborer
Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials

I numbly recline
In a filthy slicked lawn chair
As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels

The pinkest sky I'd ever seen
Still pocked with dirigibles
And flying machines that opened up

I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass
Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft
Covering the cooling tar totally
In manufactured street sheen

I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately
I take it as a sign that you're around

See J passed away
For the first time in June
And the last time last night in the Warren

As a warm, round, mournful sound
Flooded my room

Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals
Song Info
Submitted by
leahper On Mar 08, 2009
2 Meanings

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Cover art for Like Blood Does lyrics by Cymbals Eat Guitars

I think that it's supposed to be:

See Jane passed away For the first time in June And the last time last night in the Warren

Maybe a reference to the "Jane" from "The Living North"

"I'm visited by naked reality In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me"

I like to think this is about this:

"It was a time in my life when I found it impossible to listen to contemporary indie rock or pop records, because I was scared shitless of failure and mediocrity, and no one giving a good god damn about the record I was making. What it really was, I guess, was pettiness and a very childish envy of others' successes."

Cover art for Like Blood Does lyrics by Cymbals Eat Guitars

Listen after listen, I think this is my favorite Cymbals Eat Guitars song. Easily the most varied track on the album, I just love every bit of it. I could sing it a cappella from start to finish without listening it again!

Anyway, are we absolutely positive that the lyric is:

"And I'm visited by naked reality In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me"

And not:

"And I'm visited by naked reality In the higher CAUSE of the cars that cut in front of me"

I seem to recall in another comment that the CEG lyrics on SongMeanings are all directly from the album booklet, so perhaps it is "gloss"--I'll just have to write a song about the "higher cause" of cars that cut in front of me, because I love that notion.

By "notion" I guess I just mean that I like the sarcasm and sadness of the speaker's frustration with the self-centered actions of people such as people who cut in front of others all the time on the street.

And I guess I don't really understand "gloss"--I suppose the suggestion is that reality is somehow "naked" in the reflections of shiny cars, but I don't entirely know what that could mean.

Also, if it IS "cause," then "And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them." If it's gloss, why is there something in store for the car owner? Because it's fancy, so they're rich and overspend?

 
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