Lady Helen

i think i just cried on my keyboard

Maybe I'm just translating the song too literally, but I think this song is about a father whose wife passed away giving birth to his child, or shortly after. It feels like its all the directions that a mind would spin into after dealing with the loss of your other half, while having to see him/her in the childs face everyday. A reminder to carry on with life for the sake of the child, but still being incomplete without her presence there. Not something anybody would want to experience.

To me, Lady Helen represents what goes on in a father's head when he first sees his child.

Listen to Strapping Young Lad's Alien. A good part of the album were the thoughts and apprehension that went on in Townsend's head when him and his wife decided to have a kid. In Alien, it was clear that Devin was conflicted and confused about what the future would bring with a child. Everything's right and now this kid comes along to ruin everything.

In the lyrics "All the roads that once were right stay the way they are.", he realizes that his apprehension was completely unfounded.

Sorry to burst the emotion bubble for all of you here, but on the Ki "By a Thread" concert, Devin explains that his Grandpa made boats and named his personal boat "Lady Helen" after his wife, Devin's gramma. Helen only recently died, during the production of Ghost, so she would have been alive during Ki. However, it seems by Devin's explanation that he's specifically reminiscing about the boat, not his gramma.

I have no idea how this relates to the lyrics, as with many of Devin's songs, but I'll take his word for it. Interestingly, I too had a grandfather who had boats and the sailboat he had when I was growing up was also named after his wife, my grandmother. I remember long days sailing with my cousins and family in coastal Maine, so I can related to Devin's reminiscing.

This strikes me as a slightly Brain Eno-ish song, with lots of reminiscing about going out on the water, but without being as explicate as Eno usually is.

Unfortunately, I think many of Devin's songs are practically impossible to draw meaning from, I think he's much more concerned with how things sound than what they mean, sort of Yes without all the hippie-dippy transcendentalism. Yet some things are pretty clear.