Psyche

I'm looking for you in the woods tonight, I'm looking Looking for you, in my flashlight I'm searching From in the high or down me urging And I pace myself in reason Gain the wolf Gain the wolf

Conjure me as a child, Slippin' down a wet side Stretch up, but can I reach him? Jumpin' up, they drag him from the water -

I watch them march him into life I watch them take him from the pain Into the sky for your eagle eye The sun seeds a sickle and a scythe

Ridicule they won't allow Quench abuse and lettin' laugh flower Rip the cage out of your chest Let the chaos fool the rest Show without showing What you know without knowing
Twigs snap, eye catch, no canoe Only you and me alone on the au t opsy

Dissolving who we are Call out for yesterdays destiny gone We're on a foreign shore

It was the mark of fallin' I was the car still runnin'
And when you call I'll be a shield for life And if you feel it, you'll fly

The sunset had beckon me And I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in...

I got a guitar version on ug, jeetjerome the name

This may be just me, but from what I take from this song, I feel like shes singing about a love that's engrossed in being someone else (either to keep others happy or whatnot) and it seems to be tearing him apart. "Quench abuse and let love flower, Rip the cage out of your chest, Let the chaos fool the rest" She knows the real him is buried somewhere deep inside of him. She helps search for that part of him "I'm looking for you in the woods tonight, I'm looking, Looking for you with my flashlight, I'm searching From in the high or down the ocean And I pace myself in racing" and shes telling him that she's always there to be his protective shield "And when you call I'll be a shield for life, And if you feel it you will fly" while he does. All she wants is for him to let it all go and find himself so they can be together, just the two of them.

Either way, I really love this song a lot. :)

Anybody else get like the feeling of awakening the inner voice. Like, when you're searching inside for your higher self and you eventually find it and discover it was always hidden there. Then, when you realise this you can't escape the joy and love that it is both fuelled by an d which it produces ('when you feel it you will fly'). If you listen to the song with this in mind, it's kind of hard to interpret it as anything else... but that's just me. I like reading other interpretations too.

Peace xxx

I set this to "song meaning" cause I think I know what is happening here and after eight years of puzzling around I pretty sure and this is going to be big.

I read nearly all comment sections on every webside, every background information i could find and i read all other comments for the lyrics and it was those, on this page which made me confident in what I believe this song is about. So I wanna thank everyone who gave an interpretation cause it really helped me alot.

First things first, there is not one right representation of correct lyrics anywhere on the internet, even if it says it is from officials, its wrong. There are no official correct lyrics cause Martina Topley-Bird never wrote em down and they were never printed, not as far as Martina Topley-Bird I know of and I did alot of research. 3D says in an interview: "Then we just recorded guitar notes and layered them and played it to Martina. She fell in love with it and came back with these very bizarre lyrics." (independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/massive-attack-weve-always-been-into-telling-a-story-1896929.html) Even for 3D the lyrics were a mystery.

So why do I think i got the lyrics correct? I listened for hundreds of hours the song in half or less speed on youtube over the last past eight years! Over and over and over again. I listened to the original version (youtube.com/watch) cause its much better to hear the lyrics correctly then to the flash treatment version by Christoffer Berg which is in my opinion the far better version when its about the music.

Psyche means ghost or soul in greek (thx to Adu) -> Its all about a ghost or a dead person. Psyche is the mindset of a person.

"I'm looking for you in the woods tonight, I'm looking Looking for you, in my flashlight I'm searching " ->She is in the woods searching for someone in the night with a flashlight. People tend to do this when panicked or when something is of great importance, cause normally you would search in daylight not at night.

"From in the high or down, me urging" ->From somewhere she is forced to do what she does

"And I pace myself in reason" -> After realizing the nature of her driving force she has to learn that her emotions and the driving force are not able to explain what happened in the past or the circumstances.Thats why the lyrical me has to use reason to understand what happend to her and why it happend.

"Gain the wolf. Gain the wolf." This is metaphoric. The wolf is a representative of the nothern hemisphere, which gives an other impression of the background she is in. Also "the dissonance of some chords on an organ, piano, etc. that has been tuned in a system of unequal temperament; also, a chord in which such dissonance is heard" from (yourdictionary.com/wolf) unknownTattoo wrote "gain the wolf- gain the ability to hunt to track using your sences" at (forum.wordreference.com/threads/gain-the-wolf.2581700/) The wolf is often a symbol for cruelty or greed. -> I think the lyrical me tries to remember a very cruel situation of her past which hunts her but she blocked those memories so its hard to remember them in detail. Its like saying "think! think!" due to its repetition.

"Conjure me as a child" ->Now her memories come back. She remembers a child that conjures her. Children are of such a greatness to their mothers and fathers that everything they do can be conjuring, even mesmerizing. This applies even more to parents with an only child cause they get all the attention from their parents without sharing it.

"Slippin' down a wet side" -> The child slips down a wet side. The child is having an accident. On a wet side. Maybe near a lake or a river. But maybe the whole scenery is even at a beach but it has to be somewhere where is water or something wet.

"Stretch up, but can I reach him?" -> Now the memories will turn into flashbacks due to its cruel nature. The lyrical me tries to solve the situation by reacting and helping the child. This is a situation in which time tend to stretch out into infinity. Her brain and body acts on maximum level to improve her reaction time. In such situations people can remember everything in the tiniest detail. But this all breaks up with the question if she can reach him. the question alone is a sign that her brain has already calculate the outcome to be negative. She would not question it if the outcome was positive.

"Jumpin' up, they drag him from the water" ->From the last to this line there is a cut of what is happening. We do not know what happened during this time we only know that he or his body jumps up. So we know it has to do with water, so its likely that he fell into water and the body went missing. After some time his body turns up (Jumpin' up). Now we get confronted with "they", which means that the lyrical me and her companion were/are not alone. We don't know if there were people or if the lyrical me had called for the help of people but people drag him out of the water.

"I watch them march him into life" -> "Them" are reviving the child, which means there must be a person of medical knowledge or the people that dragged him from the water have called for an ambulance or there is a person who got medical skills. But its very likely that "they" are not "them" meaning that another group (maybe emergency doctors) have arrived at the scene.

"I watch them take him from the pain" ->The child is in great pain after the accident. The medical team ("them") is giving the child drugs or some sort of relieve.

"Into the sky for your eagle eye the sun seeds a sickle and a scythe" -> Metaphor. Eagle eye: "If you talk about a person's eagle eye, you mean that they are watching someone or something carefully or are very good at noticing things." from (collinsdictionary.com/de/worterbuch/englisch/eagle-eye) -> Sickle and Scythe: "Sickle = Used with one hand; short handle and blade; sharp on the inside curve of the blade. Used for cutting grains or hay. Scythe = Two-handled tool used standing up instead of stooped over; longer blade and longer handle. Used for cutting same kinds of crops as sickle. Evolved after the sickle." from (quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-sickle-and-a-scythe) The meaning of this is very hard to render. My interpretation is that the sun is a metaphor for the destiny or fate of the child or even god. The sickle resembles a tool that is used to earn buds from organics as the scythe is a more hard harvesting designed tool. The meaning could be that the child has to pay a little or greater toll to survive the accident. the eagle eye refers to be attentively, which can be directed to the lyrical me, to the reader, to the medical staff or even god. Someones gotta pay great attention to what will happen next.

"Ridicule they won't allow" -> medical treatment in serious cases is a very hard and stressfull job, in which noone should disturb. The lyrical me can't deal with the present and therefor is getting insane. People who suffer a psyhological trauma can act unpredictive. Maybe the lyrical self tries to compensate it with humor, whis is totally inappropriate for the persons around her.

"Quench abuse and lettin' laugh flower" -> "quench" can mean, among other things, "extinguish". Since "abuse" is generally a bad thing, presumably the song wants it to stop. But you really are wasting your time (but no more of mine, after this response) trying to wring some sense out of this stuff (or this poetry, if you prefer), wrote Martyn94 in (forum.wordreference.com/threads/quench-abuse.2581706/) The lyrical me wants to stop the abuse she sees while the doctors or surgeons are treating her son/child and is becoming even more histerical, why she starts to laugh a mad laugh. Note: Please trust me on this. It is not love and not loaf, it is laugh. I listened to pronunciation for ages and I'm pretty sure its laugh.

"Rip the cage out of your chest" -> The surgeons are ripping of the childs chest for treatment while the lyrical me is watching.

"Let the chaos fool the rest" -> The lyrical me does not understand what the doctors and surgeons are doing she is just feeling her son/child is being violated by them, so the chaos in which everyone is can fool everyone else but not her as she is sure about it. But she cannot do anything against it, she can just watch.

"Show without showing, what you know without knowing" -> The lyrical me does not want to say "I told you so". She knew what was going to happen even though noone listened to her.

"Twigs snap, eye catch" ->Twigs snap, a metaphor for broken bones. Eye catch meaning she is looking at the operation, she can't look away.

"No canoe, only you and me alone in the au t opsy" -> The canoe represents a coffin or casket, because the death was water related. The child has not even such a vehicle which is also metaphor for the afterlife in which a person can safely cross the Styx. It also could be that the whole accident had to do with a canoe trip. Her child is dead and she is alone on the autopsy with him. Note: This is groundbreaking for the understanding of the meaning of the text. Every written down lyrics got that one wrong. Autopsy. She just sings it a very weird way but it makes the most sense. Try and listen to the original song at half speed and you will get it like me.

"Dissolving who we are" -> The body of her child dissolves like her mind is dissolving by the trauma. She can't find sense in life.

"Call out for yesterdays destiny gone" -> She cries and begs for her destiny to change or to change the past.

"We're on a foreign shore" -> She is in the real world, he is in afterlife, but all the realities are strange to the lyrical me as well as her dead child.

"It was the mark of fallin'" -> It was destined to happen. Also: "mark. noun. A person identified as an easy target, or "sucker". A mark is always the short end of a joke or scam, and is never let in on whats going on. A mark is usually being cheated out of money. It's origin is from old English traveling carnivals from the late 1800s to early 1900s, where workers would refer to people paying to see thier made up shows and games a "mark". not from urban gangsters like most people think. Mark is also the origin to the term "smark" or "smart mark" which is a person who know's he/she is being scamed." from (urbandictionary.com/define.php) fallin can also mean failing in some sense. At this point the story brings us back to the beginning, when the lyrical me was searchging in the woods for the psyche of her son.

"I was the car still runnin' " -> A car that is still running is a metaphor for a turning point. She hopes that something will be different after being in the woods or she is waiting in the car for something to happen. Maybe she let the car running to do suicide with carbon monoxide.

"And when you call I'll be a shield for life" -> She hopes to hear/see him only for one more time to show him that he would gain a shield for life, a protection she could not deliver while he was alive.

"And if you feel it, you'll fly" ->The shield is not only a reference to the living child in the past that would have be protected by her shield and would fly instead of falling but it is also a protection for the child in the afterlife, as he would fly to heaven and not fall to hell.

"The sunset had beckon me" -> She gets awaken by the sunset. She started to search at night and must have fell asleep during it and now wakes up after the sun sets. A sun that sets is always a metaphor for something that comes to an end. The lyrical me awakes with the end meaning that she wasn't awoke since the accident and hadn't been ever since. Now that she is at the end she gets to a certain state of awareness.

"And I was set to fall in/As I was set to fall in (x10)" -> At the end she was destined to be here at this point at this time. It was set. She has no doubt that taking her life is the only way to set it, to get it done. To fall is likely a metaphor for failing but in this case she is falling from something or falling in something. Clearly she kills herself and commits suicide on the same place her child died. The repetition is a way to express the fall from a great height and the same effect that she had when she wasn't able to reach him and safe him from harm: time stretches and slows down as her life passes by, her memories flashing before she hits the ground and also meaning that her whole life was set to end like this.

I hope you like my interpretation and I hope that it gives you the meaning you were searching for this long time. It was for me and I feel better since I know what the song is about so I hope you will too. Thanks to everyone who are still trying to interpret such hard lyrics and songs, especially the massive attack ones, they are hard to crack. Hope you can dry some tears in your lifes. Bye

Psyche = Soul (spirit,breath,ghost etc) in ancient Greece

Like Freud (and Erikson) Jung regarded the psyche as made up of a number of separate but interacting systems. The three main ones were the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.

Now starting from this I would say that She is searching for her unconscious self, in the beginning of the song. But it's a ridiculous effort.(looking in the hay kind of search) The wolf represents her fears, her life script that tells her that this is meaningless. And the wolf gets closer (Gain the wolf)

"Conjure me as a child" This is the Child Archetype within her, who is asleep, even dead but resurrected by other entities. The Child is the prime source of energy in every human being. Play>redbull "Into the sky for your eagle eye" Now this is where she sees the world in a wonderful perspective. The Child is in charge now, but the Sun (Ego IMO) produces weapons.

I feel like the whole song is a conversation with deeper parts of herself. "Rip the cage out of your chest" The thoracic cage reps the individual censorship. Most of the feelings we feel in that area so without a cage all the emotions will blossom. Without censorship life is more intense. It is also a metaphor for releasing one's creativity and intuition. "Show without showing What you know without knowing" (art, intuitive expression)

"Twigs snap I catch no canoe only you and me" A Father archetype that protects her when she falls. I feel like this is a Paternal encouragement to help his daughter learn from mistakes in a protective way. There is no stability(canoe) but I catch if something goes wrong. (swimming type encouragement)

It was your mark of falling (depression) I was the car still running (even in depression she has a powerful car but she distance herself from it)

"The sun set a bigger me "This is were the Ego lets room for the deeper parts, and when she becomes conscious of all that wealth that lies in her subconscious and unconscious (energy,strength,creativity,spontaneity,power,protection and the Archetypes : Child,Father etc) she becomes a bigger SELF a more developed human.

But I feel like the song doesn't end like that. Listening to the song again and again (live versions, cds, remixes etc) I think there are multiple versions.

It was your markER of falling I was the car still running And when you'RE GONE I'll be a shield for life And if you feel it you will fly (FIGHT?) The sun SHOOT a bigger me

I think She sings it based on her feelings.

Beautiful beautiful song!!

The song could be about losing someone she loved in death. Failing to save them. I found this song coincidentally the same week my fur baby cat was struck by a car :( and I felt and wished there was something I could do. I would still look for his ghost even though I knew he was gone. "searching for you in the woods tonight" I had to face myself in reason. Realizing you may not find them. I also raised my cat as a baby, and watched him brought into life and then taken from it :( She could be talking about a child she lost or something similar :*( and wishing it was her instead as she was set to fall in.

I'm looking for you in the woods tonight, I'm looking Looking for you in my flashlight, I'm searching From in the high or down the ocean (she is looking everywhere for who she lost) And I face myself in reason. (then has to accept reality) Gain the wolf Gain the wolf (she accepts reality which is painful and tragic like a wolf)

Conjure me as a child Slipping down a web side Stretch up I cannot reach him (going back to feeling as helpless as a child) Jumping up they drag him from the water (bringing him out of the water (Drown?) I watch them march him into life (watch him being born) I watch them take him from the pale ( watch him die) Into the sky for your eagle eye ( ascending to the sky for you to find) The sun seeds a sickle and a scythe (the sun seeds life and death) Ridicule they won't allow (blaming or ridiculing someone or self for tragedy) Quench abuse and let love flower Rip the cage out of your chest (free now to fly) Let the chaos rule the rest Show without showing What you know without knowing Twigs snap eye/I catch no canoe only you and me (maybe they fell and drown and she couldnt catch them with a canoe) Alone on the old tea hope sea

Dissolving who we are (dying and losing a part of yourself) Call out for yesterdays destiny come. (the calling of a tragic future which was yesterdays destiny) We're on a foreign shore ( now on a foreign shore) must have been tragic event)

It was your mark of falling. (when he died) I was the car still running. (she was still alive) And will you call and be assured for life (wanting to be visited by him) And if you feel it you will fly

The sun should have been with me (wishes it was her instead) And I was set to fall in. (she feels it should have been her as she was set to fall in) As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in As I was set to fall in

For some reason I hear "cane the wolf" in the beginning of the song instead of "gain the wolf". I like it my way better, because I interpret it as having a double meaning of "Cain, the wolf". Perhaps it's me just looking too deep into the song. :)

Either way, I absolutely love "Psyche". It's one of my all-time favorites from Massive Attack.

I'm probably biased because I've been reading a lot about mythology lately, but this brings to mind for me different parts of Egyptian mythology. Either the journey of the sun across the sky, or the story of Isis and Osiris, when Isis had to search, for the parts of his dismembered body and bring him back to life to conceive Horus. I doubt it was written about either one, but that's what I think of.

Regardless, this is a beautiful song. Can't wait to hear the album version.

No idea what this song is about. Im starting to think it means nothing and it is just a collection of words that sounds great.

Still this is a fantastic song. My favorite by Massive Attack

In the last verse: "And will you call and be assured for life" should be "And if you call I'll be your shield for life"*. I've confirmed this with a number of other online readings of the lyrics and it makes more sense. Plus, to be honest, it sounds a lot more like Martina's saying "shield" than "assured," especially in the original version on Heligoland (the version on the Splitting the Atom EP is a mix).