Eid Ma Clack Shaw

First, I love this song. Second, this song is something of a joke...Bill's dark humor coming through. The character in the song dreams a way to resolve his grief but wakes to find it was utter nonsense. That's because there is no solution to grief. It's the rider you cannot put aground. You're stuck with it and you're dreaming if you think you can escape it. Ha ha! Good one Bill.

I don't think it's any language, it's made up. He's saying he 'dreamed the perfect song' but of course that's impossible so when he looks at what he wrote down in the night it's nonsense, gibberish.

Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé. That is my answer to anyone asking what the song he wrote means.

I actually think it's because you can't read in your sleep. Dreaming takes place in a different lobe of the brain. Any words read in your dream would be jibberish.... Didn't anyone see that episode of the old Batman series? lol

This song meaning should be obvious to anyone with any experience with lucid dreaming or hypnagogic thoughts.

There are two different parts/dreams that he has in this song

1st part he dreams of his lover that she was with her "dreamed it was a dream you were gone"

then he realizes that it was a dream and not real he feels "ripped by reality" then he goes on to draw comparisons between love and the king of the beasts.

says that it must kill to eat if it gets hungry(should be self explanatory)

2nd dream- he goes back to sleep. he has a second dream shortly after.

the second dream is "the perfect" song. there are several parts to this statement

1)when you lucid dream or even are just entering the rudimentary dream stages, oftentimes you will hear wonderful beautiful music that is so moving and meaningful however, when you awake it is hard to consolidate what you just subconsciously created. As a musician, this happens to me all the time. On a side note there are several notable musicians who use dream music as their inspiration for creating music. 2)he wakes half way and scribbled down the song lyrics which he had created in his dream. Words that enter and leave your mind when you are dreaming/in hypnagogia sound meaningful and sensical at the time, these often are snippets of speech that you hear over your day and sometimes in other peoples voice or even your own. this happens more or less to everyone who has experienced lucid dreaming or remained concious in the hypnagogic state

however when you think about the thoughts you had(if you remember them) they are absolute jibberish many times. Sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they are so complicated that if you trace them back far enough there is a meaning, but this is hard to do.(ive written several poems in my sleep before)

my cousin described the dream speak for him as words like "denim chicken" things nonsensical and abstract. It varies from person to person.

ANYWAYS, bill callahan is inspired to write a song, but when he scribbles down the lyrics later and re reads what he had written he discovers that it is all nonsense.

From this several other interpretations can be drawn. hes making a statement about art and music as a whole

the song, like the actual song, the one i'm reviewing is the song he created in his dreams. (like created a song in his dream about creating a song in his dream) this is the one im leaning towards, because I've had epiphanies like this in dreams before. (Example: i had a dream that I was the only person in the whole world and everyone else was a figment of my imagination(solipsism) and then I awoke and realized i was dreaming and it was actually true in the context of my dream that everything around me WAS a figment of my imagination)

stuff like that happens when you WILD/MILD/Lucid dream occasionally.

that in my opinion was my initial understanding of the song. I would like to think that is what he meant, because if it was, he is a genius.

Eid ma clack shaw Zupoven del ba Mertepy ven seinur Cofally ragdah

What language is it? What is the meaning of that?

Bill Callahan's IQ is 140

Are you smarter than Bill Callahan?

Amazing song - perfect delivery. Chilling.

I have two theories on the "answers": 1) He was half asleep when he scribbled the solution. The dream did actually have the answers, but he lost them by writing them in that state. 2) He is begging to be shown the way by his lover's ghost. The ghost visits him in a dream and gives him the answers. However, the language is that of the dead, and while he understood it in a state of sleep, he cannot translate the answers into anything meaningful while awake.

This is the perfect song. It plods along beautifully, gently lifting and falling until when you get to just after two minutes and thirty seconds when we're catapulted into the most brilliant and uplifting chorus (not actually sure if the 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' bit would be classes as the chorus because I feel the structure of the song is a little more unusual in it's structure than it appears). As for the lyrics, I’m stumped as to what they mean but they are articulated perfectly and I couldn't even begin to count the times I’ve cranked the volume up at just the right time and sang along not having a clue what I’m singing. Though I’m a big Cocteau Twins fan so I’ve been singing along to made up words for years. . . ...

I don't think this song would have appeared out of place on Lou Reed's 'Transformer' album, does anybody agree?

metaphors aside, this is what i got:

"I flipped my forelock, I twitched my withers, I reared and bucked I could not put my rider aground"

"I fell back asleep some time later on... I woke halfway..."

it's a horse (horses "sleep" several broken periods of time a day) that dreams about its lover (a rider?), and that writes the perfect song. of course, when it wakes up and checks what it wrote it's gibberish, like gary larson's "cow tools". it has mental life but is deprived of sensemaking.

amazing song.