4 Meanings
Add Yours
Follow
Share
Q&A
Perfect Life Lyrics
When I was 13, I had a sister for 6 months.
She arrived one February morning, pale and shellshocked, from past lives I could not imagine.
She was 3 years older than me, but in no time we became friends.
We’d listen to her mix tapes: Dead Can Dance, Felt, This Mortal Coil…
She introduced me to her favourite books, gave me clothes, and my first cigarette.
Sometimes we would head down to Blackbirds Moor to watch the barges on Grand Union in the twilight.
She said “The water has no memory.”
For a few months everything about our lives was perfect.
It was only us, we were inseparable.
But gradually, she passed into another distant part of my memory
Until I could no longer remember her face, her voice, even her name.
We have got...
We have got the perfect life...
She arrived one February morning, pale and shellshocked, from past lives I could not imagine.
She was 3 years older than me, but in no time we became friends.
We’d listen to her mix tapes: Dead Can Dance, Felt, This Mortal Coil…
She introduced me to her favourite books, gave me clothes, and my first cigarette.
Sometimes we would head down to Blackbirds Moor to watch the barges on Grand Union in the twilight.
She said “The water has no memory.”
For a few months everything about our lives was perfect.
It was only us, we were inseparable.
But gradually, she passed into another distant part of my memory
Until I could no longer remember her face, her voice, even her name.
We have got the perfect life...
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
What a gorgeous, sad song. According to Steven Wilson, this song is part of an album that explores the imagined memories and experiences of Joyce Carol Vincent, the woman who died in her British flat and went unmissed and unfound for 3 years.
I think the "sister" could either be a real friend who visited for six months, or, perhaps more likely, an imaginary friend the speaker invented. We never learn how they become separated, only that she faded from memory completely, much as our imaginary friends do when we grow up and grow out of them. But wow, how sad. This song is a picture of the purity of childhood friendship and imagination and the hard reality of growing up and leaving those things behind..
@OttieKat About Joyce Carol Vincent: after they found her body, people said that she was such a nice person, and someone that was really good to other people. She even had some (a lot, I don't know) friends. And they just forgot about her. Very sad.
@OttieKat About Joyce Carol Vincent: after they found her body, people said that she was such a nice person, and someone that was really good to other people. She even had some (a lot, I don't know) friends. And they just forgot about her. Very sad.
SW has stated in several interviews that although this album was highly inspired by the Joyce Vincent story, the female character in the album is fictional and not meant to directly biographical of her per se.
SW created a faux blog for the character in the album at http://handcannoterase.com, "Perfect Life" is the character's recollection of her short but special time with a foster sister her parents adopted, but then the foster sister moved away to another place as the character's parents marriage fell apart . . .
While the album version is rather mysterious as to who this temporary sister might be, the Grand Union Mix on the blu ray bonus material has additional spoken word lyrics that reveal she was indeed a foster sister who was re-housed.
Aside from the well-known story of Joyce Carol Vincent:
This song always reminds me of Dostoevsky's "Netotchka". Plus, I can see a clear reference of the song "Children of the Sun" by Dead Can Dance. Has anyone else noticed?