"Oh Comely" as written by and Jeff Mangum....
Oh comely
I will be with you when you lose your breath
Chasing the only
Meaningful memory you thought you had left
With some pretty bright and bubbly
Terrible scene that was doing her thing on your chest
But oh comely
It isn't as pretty as you'd like to guess
In your memory you're
Drunk on your awe to me
It doesn't mean anything at all
Oh comely
All of your friends are all letting you blow
Bristling and ugly
Bursting with fruits falling out from the holes
Of some pretty bright and bubbly
Friend you could need to say comforting things in your ear
But oh comely
There isn't such one friend that you could find
Here standing next to me only my enemy
I'll crush him with everything i own
Say what you want to say hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful all in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden was all you were needing
When you still believed in me
Say what you want to say and hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me
I know they buried her body with others
Her sister and mother and 500 families
And will she remember me 50 years later
I wished i could save her in some sort of time machine
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
Goldaline my dear
We will fold and freeze together
Far away from here
There is sun and spring and green forever
But now we move to feel
For ourselves inside some strangers stomach
Place your body here
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine
I will be with you when you lose your breath
Chasing the only
Meaningful memory you thought you had left
With some pretty bright and bubbly
Terrible scene that was doing her thing on your chest
But oh comely
It isn't as pretty as you'd like to guess
In your memory you're
Drunk on your awe to me
It doesn't mean anything at all
Oh comely
All of your friends are all letting you blow
Bristling and ugly
Bursting with fruits falling out from the holes
Of some pretty bright and bubbly
Friend you could need to say comforting things in your ear
But oh comely
There isn't such one friend that you could find
Here standing next to me only my enemy
I'll crush him with everything i own
Say what you want to say hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful all in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden was all you were needing
When you still believed in me
Say what you want to say and hang for your hollow ways
Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracle for me
I know they buried her body with others
Her sister and mother and 500 families
And will she remember me 50 years later
I wished i could save her in some sort of time machine
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
Goldaline my dear
We will fold and freeze together
Far away from here
There is sun and spring and green forever
But now we move to feel
For ourselves inside some strangers stomach
Place your body here
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine
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He's looking back on all of this now, thinking about how he let her down, and regretting it, wanting to make things better, but she is dead. And he wishes he could go back and make things better ("wished I could save her in some sort of time machine"), but it's too late. He now realizes he was actually her enemy, not her friend--There's something about how he sings "we know who our enemies are" that seems to say, "No, we don't, and sometimes the people we think are our friends are just the opposite".
This is such a sad, beautiful song. I have thought for a long time that it is similar in tone and plot to an amazing novel called "The Book of Ruth". If you love this song, you might be amazed when you read the book by how strikingly similar it feels. And no, seeing the crappy TV movie they made based on the book doesn't count.
As I piece the story together I find that the songs aren't in chronological order. If we change the order of some of the songs, a through line begins to present itself. So, this is me trying to understand the story of the conjoined twins and what, if anything that has to do with Anne Frank.
1.)King of Carrot Flowers Part 2. The time before. Limbo. Purgatory. The rhythym here and the instrumentation create a feeling of being stuck in time. The lyrics are spiritual. "I love you Jesus Christ." Floating suspnended in a mother's womb.
2. Oh Comely
"But now we move to feel
For ourselves inside some strangers stomach
Place your body here
Let your skin begin to blend itself with mine"
"Inside some strangers stomach" could be how someone reincarnated as a fetus could look at their present situation. The "let your skin begin to blend itself with mine" line could refer to growing together in the womb as conjoined twins.
3.) The King of Carrot Flowers part 3:
"Up and over
We go through the wave and undertow
I will float until I learn how to swim
Inside my mother in a garbage bin
Until I find myself again, again"
The birth. Being birthed. The music here is frenetic and charging. The imagery in the lyrics as clear as any on the album. "Until I find myself again" referring to being reincarnated. The next two verses the baby (ies) getting older. The following three lines, one from each verse, takes us through the first few phases of life:
"I will float until I learn how to swim
I will spit until I learn how to speak
I will shout until they know what I mean."
There is also something in the third verse about a "synthetic flying machine." I have no idea what this means. It's only of note because of another line in Oh Comely: "I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine." Are these thoughts related? I don't know.
4.) The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1:
"When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers." This song also has some of the most straightforward lyrics on the album.
It's about two young people who shared a (shitty) childhood (twins? brother and sister?) and how they dealt with it (imagination, solace in each other, etc.)
"And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder
And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for
And this is the room
One afternoon I knew I could love you
And from above you how I sank into your soul
Into that secret place where no one dares to go"
The two seemed to have shared a sexual relationship of some sort. (Also noteworthy but ambiguous is the referring to "your" mother, but when talking about the father, just saying "Dad".) It also could be that the mother and father in this song are talked about more in Oh Comely: "Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies, While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park".
5.) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea:
One song on the album that potentially seems like a stand alone, but if you listen to the lyrics with the conjoined twins theme in mind, there are some interesting connections:
"What a beautiful face I have found in this place; Let me hold it close and keep it here with me.
And one day we will die and our ashes will fly. Love to be in the arms of all I'm keeping here with me."
Just a selection of lyrics from the song. Didn't to want to post all of them. Particularly of note, expecially when trying to build the conjoined twins theme is the last line above "love to be in the arms of all I'm keeping here with me."
6.) Two-Headed Boy: (the events in this song are out of chronology, much like the entire album)
Upon first listening I assumed two-head boy to be symbolic for something else (someone consumed with sex, someone who's bi-polar, etc.) but I now see that it's possible the title is meant to be taken literally and the two-headed boy refers to a set of conjoined twins. In this light, I believe the second verse and the third verse are about the twins enjoying life and each other's company\falling in love:
"Two headed boy
Put on Sunday shoes
And dance round the room to accordion keys
With the needle that sings in your heart
Catching signals that sound in the dark
Catching signals that sound in the dark
And in the dark we will take off our clothes...
Two headed boy
With pulleys and weights
Creating a radio played just for two
In the parlor with a moon across her face
And through the music he sweetly displays
Silver speakers that sparkle all day"
I believe the chorus is about the twins having surgery to seperate them (likely against their will) and one of the twins dies during the procedure:
"We will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking
Everything that you could keep inside
Now your eyes ain't moving,now
They just lay there in their climb"
The last line of the third verse also support this: "Made for his lover who's floating and choking with her hands across her face."
The first verse is a case of en media res. The song starts with the twin already dead and the boy being alone in his room, reaching out and trying to connect with her:
"Two headed boy
All floating in glass
The sun it has passed
Now it's blacker than black
I can hear as you tap on your jar
I am listening to hear where you are
I am listening to hear where you are"
The fourth verse is the boy saying goodbye to his sister/love:
"Two headed boy
There is no reason to grieve
The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves
Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow
And I will take you and leave you alone
Watching spirals of white softly flow
Over your eyelids and all you did
Will wait until the point when you let go"
6.) The Fool: A funeral dirge.
7.) Holland 1945:
"The only girl I have ever loved...." and he then goes on to describe Anne Frank (but then they buried her alive with just her sister at her side and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone)
So if the narrator of this song is the same narrator from the first 5 songs, then it stands to reason that the only girl he ever loved is his twin and is also Anne Frank. So was Anne Frank reincarnated as his twin sister? Some lines that support this:
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: "Anna's ghost all around, Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me."
Oh Comely: I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine.
Ghost: Ghost, ghost I know you live within me
I feel you as you fly
In thunder clouds above the city
Into one that I love"
"And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929" (Anne Frank was born in 1929 and died in 1945, just a couple of months before the allied forces invaded the beaches at Normandy i.e. only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone.)
(Also from Ghost) "With all that was left within me
Until we tore in two
Now wings and rings and there's so many
Waiting here for you."
Until we tore in two could refer to their seperation talked about in two-headed boy.)
To be honest, this is just one possible theme in album with many themes. I haven't been able to really crack (yet) Oh Comely and Two Headed Boy part 2. I have a feeling that a lot of the answers to the mystery that is this album lie within those two songs.
Any thought? Do you agree there is a conjoined twins theme? Reincarnation? Is it meant to be taken literally or just symbolic? Share what you think. This is the most complex, layered album I have ever listened to, and I love that no matter how many times I've heard it, I discover something new with each listen.
"Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums,
The music and medicine you needed for comforting."
is a reference to the crazed comfort Hitler received from his public speeches which were, at the time and to a lot of people, very moving and logical.
"And pluck all your silly strings, bend all your notes for me.
Soft silly music is meaningful magical,
The movements were beautiful, all in your ovaries."
This is where the direction of the song transitions from Hitler to Anne Frank. It is, first, a reference to Hitler's attempt to persuade his people (including Two-Headed Boy who's not havin it), then it becomes a reference to Anne Frank masturbating.
From there on the ideas are more straight forward. The death of Anne Frank -
"And will she remember me fifty years later?" (when we are reincarnated)
And finally the song ends with the beginning of their new life that they will spend quite together until, at last, Two-Headed Boy is forced, once again, to cope with the death of his "soul mate".
I'm not claiming to absolutely know what this song is about, but here's a wild guess: a random, trashy girl has sex with a man living a shit hole of a home with his family. She's insignificant, it seems, and their reltionship is purely sex out of desperation. I imagine he's older and disgusting and she's this 'bright, bubbly thing'.
"Your father made fetuses
With flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother
Were asleep in the trailer park
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums
The music and medicine you needed for comforting
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving
And pluck all your silly strings
And bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful magical
The movements were beautiful
All in your ovaries
All of them milking with green fleshy flowers
While powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines
Smelling of semen all under the garden
Was all you were needing when you still believed in me "
The relaltionship is purely sexual trash. Perhaps the relationship broke off, hence 'when yous till believed in me' - when they're having the affair. The man is probably intensely obsessed with her, his sexual energy totally focused on this young girl. He wishes he could be with her 'save her in a time machine'.
Again, she's insignificant, 'buried with...500 families'. She's trash, just a person. But their primal, sexual connection left them together.
The Goldaline lines seem to be about Siamese twins, but perhaps his infatuation with her is maternal as well. It's almost Freud-like, a sexual, phallic obsession. The semen, the ovaries. It's so primal and natural. Impregnation, being a twin (being together forever [Siamese]), an affair in a bored marriage, obsession, a revival of youthful sexual hormones, 'know who your enemies are' (she has moved on from their affair). etc. more later.
Your rhetoric is not only crass, its inaccurate. What? "is Freud-Like." Do you even know what a Phallus is. Because none of those things you describe in reference to "phallic obsession" seem to resemble a Phallus in any way... Look it up... And leave Freud out of it. Why is it that every time someone uses the man's name it is always followed by a reference to cocks and the word "Maternal"
so, yeah, i think that's pretty much what the song is saying... heh.
I think that about sums it up.
This could possibly be the greatest song I have ever heard in my entire 17 years of existence, not to mention the greatest band. Jeff Mangum is pure genius.
Hell yes.