Face and Ghost (The Children's Song)

This song sound like a mild trip ("Got a deathgrip on this vision","It's like never ending mirrors playing tricks on my eyes"), but I think it's about growing up, kicking and screaming the whole way.

It may be brought on by a first love, seeing how it can be both wonderful and destructive ("It's the face of one ravaged by love/It's both dead and alive"), and wanting to just go back to where it was simple ("can you hear that children's song? Can you take me to that place?"). But, "In spite of my confusion, up above all my pain", he's being thrown forward ("Here we go again").

i agree, this song is about painfully growing up ="D

"Growing up," in the sense of no longer being a little kid, is a tangential aspect of the larger phenomenon this song is about. Consider the lines:

"You got it bad; You got it good. You saw the sun Like you knew that you would. We gotta make this better, Gotta make this right. Ain't no peace in the valley baby 'Til the darkness turns to light."

The subject is in a difficult but nonetheless good situation, because he "saw the sun." "Sun"/"son" is a pun used throughout this album with several layers of meaning, one of which is "Jesus" (as in the son of God, the light of truth).

This song depicts the continuing struggle that begins in the song "Voodoo Lady" and recurs in "Where Fishes Go" and "Feel the Quiet River Rage," the internal struggle of whether or not the person should choose to accept his newly discovered spirituality or remain concerned only with the material world.

The internal nature of the conflict going on in the fellow's head leads me to think of this as a song where he's talking to himself. However, I think there's an intentional double-meaning where the person saying "you got it bad lover" etc. could be understood to be Ed's lover talking to him, because we learn elsewhere that it is through this love that he has found Jesus/spirituality, so to speak.

But it's not easy to accept a life of spiritual love. It is painful, challenging, frightening, and a lot of work. But more importantly than all that, it requires that you abandon your own self and surrender your will to love/Jesus. This "dying to yourself" is why people call themselves "born again" Christians -- their own selves have died, and a new self is born who is controlled by Jesus (Live would refer to this person as "the one" or something else less specific).

This is where we get "the face of one ravaged by love," and this is why "it's both dead and alive." It is, to quote Paul, "dead to the flesh" ("flesh" not meaning sex, but rather the physical world) but alive in Christ (Ed's new-found spirituality).

The lyrics about children and nature build other layers of meaning on top of this starting point. The juxtaposition in the lines "can you hear that children's song?/ can you take me to that place?/ do you hear that pilgrim's song?/ can you take me there?" suggest Ed is implying a parallel or similarity between being childlike and being a pilgrim (seeker of God). Jesus certainly did tell people to have the faith of a child.

Ventifact...I think your in part right, but your missing one big aspect of the song, he longs for the child within himself, or the song/vibration that used to sing, because he is lost in "maya" meaning "Illusion" or the outer world around us, in the song it seems that he has lost touch with himself or the sun/son, the light aspect of his life which can only be found inside of him. And nowhere else. Rather than using the Jesus Christ theory I would rather go for the Christed center which is within all of us. The Oneness...