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"
I ran down the road, pants down to my knees
Screaming "please come help me, that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me!"
And I'm writing a novel because it's never been done before
First house that I saw I wrote house up on the door
And told the people who lived there they had to get out "cause my reality is realer than yours"
And there's no time for the present
And there's a black dog on the bed
I went to the backyard to burn my only clothes
And the dog ran out and said "you can't turn nothing into nothing is with me no more"
Well I'm no doctor but that monkey might be right
And if he is I'll be walking him my whole life
I rode to Malibu on a dune buggy with Neil
He said "you're gonna have to drive me down on the beach if you ever want to write the real"
And I said "I'm sorry, young man what is your name again?"
Now everywhere I go in West Hollywood
It's filled with people pretending they don't see the actress and the actress wishing that they could
We could do ayahuasca
Baby if I wasn't holding all these drinks
Something 'bout the way Violet whips her hair
That makes me empty my pockets on the corner to corner bumming twenties as if I was the mayor
I don't need any new friends, Momma
But I could really use something to do
So if you're up for it sometimes
I swear you wouldn't have to be my muse
Heidegger and Sartre, drinking poppy tea
I could've sworn last night I passed out in my van and now these guys are pouring one for me
I'll never leave the canyon 'cause I'm surrounded on all sides
By people writing novels and living on amusement rides
Screaming "please come help me, that Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me!"
And I'm writing a novel because it's never been done before
First house that I saw I wrote house up on the door
And told the people who lived there they had to get out "cause my reality is realer than yours"
And there's no time for the present
And there's a black dog on the bed
I went to the backyard to burn my only clothes
And the dog ran out and said "you can't turn nothing into nothing is with me no more"
Well I'm no doctor but that monkey might be right
And if he is I'll be walking him my whole life
I rode to Malibu on a dune buggy with Neil
He said "you're gonna have to drive me down on the beach if you ever want to write the real"
And I said "I'm sorry, young man what is your name again?"
Now everywhere I go in West Hollywood
It's filled with people pretending they don't see the actress and the actress wishing that they could
We could do ayahuasca
Baby if I wasn't holding all these drinks
Something 'bout the way Violet whips her hair
That makes me empty my pockets on the corner to corner bumming twenties as if I was the mayor
I don't need any new friends, Momma
But I could really use something to do
So if you're up for it sometimes
I swear you wouldn't have to be my muse
Heidegger and Sartre, drinking poppy tea
I could've sworn last night I passed out in my van and now these guys are pouring one for me
I'll never leave the canyon 'cause I'm surrounded on all sides
By people writing novels and living on amusement rides
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I believe it's, "you can't turn nothing into nothingness with me no more".
My favorite line on the record is, "cause I'm surrounded on all sides / by people writing novels / and living on amusement rides". (Now, he's started saying "and living lives that look like mine.")
Thanks for the correction!