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She Divines Water Lyrics
How can I believe that everything
in this world is going to be fine?
How can I believe that everything
in this world has its place and time?
When I lay down to sleep, I feel the world spin
Slightly off axis, it's shaped like a fig
And when I lie next to you, I shiver and shake
You tell me you love me, I dream I'm awake
How can I believe that everything
in this world is going to be fine?
And how can I believe that everything
in this world has its place and time?
Cause when I lay down to sleep, I have the same dream
Of a world-famous actress in a pink limousine
And she flies through the sky in that pink Cadillac
While the boys of the press, we drink vodka in back
And she tells us our fortune by crumbling leaves
And she teaches us card tricks, the Jack makes us weak
She divines water by dancing a jig for the boys of the Press
She will whistle a pitch
in this world is going to be fine?
How can I believe that everything
in this world has its place and time?
Slightly off axis, it's shaped like a fig
And when I lie next to you, I shiver and shake
You tell me you love me, I dream I'm awake
in this world is going to be fine?
And how can I believe that everything
in this world has its place and time?
Of a world-famous actress in a pink limousine
And she flies through the sky in that pink Cadillac
While the boys of the press, we drink vodka in back
And she tells us our fortune by crumbling leaves
And she teaches us card tricks, the Jack makes us weak
She divines water by dancing a jig for the boys of the Press
She will whistle a pitch
Song Info
Submitted by
typo On May 15, 2002
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He's tired of his life so he's dreaming of bigger things. "I dream I'm awake" he dreams he's in the world he imagines. A great song all together.
Why do I want deeper meaning to a song? You might be asking a similar question. CvB is one of the great underrated bands in American music. This track has a special quality; like much of the album, it works to grow awareness of a widening gap in American society between heroes/haves and common folks/have-nots. We are responsible for this gap. While it might seem unnatural to espouse participation in a shared mindset of such excess, we do so every time we turn on a TV or stream. We want our lives to be as warm, pink and high-flying as our favorite actresses, but it’s only a dream.
What is a dream, what is not, and how do we know? Love can give us a sense of order and security and it can be disorienting and disquieting. Our narrator, in bed, seems unsettled in the presence of his partner. He finds himself in a recurring dream having the luck to live it up in the back of a limousine riding through the sky as a member of the press with a famous actress who displays a wide array of party tricks to entertain them. She means to charm them, ostensibly to advance her career, a hint at the transactional nature of this relationship in which she will always have the upper hand.
A Cadillac is a status symbol, but an old-fashioned, outdated one. Similarly, the “boys of the press” feels dated. Both hearken back to postwar 1950s-60s America and the start of a consumerist, corporate, conformist culture which peaked in the Reagan 1980s to which CvB and other postpunk, underground/alternative music was a countercultural reaction. This preoccupation with an idealized postwar Americana is revisited much more pointedly in CvB’s follow-up to this album, Key Lime Pie, in songs like Jack Ruby, Sweethearts and When I Win the Lottery.
While the actress’s entertainment for the boys is transactional, still there’s some real magic to it. They drink vodka, but she divines water. Since she does so by “dancing a jig,” I always thought the following line was “she will wrestle a pig,” which rhymes, and would be an extreme but suitably surreal way to curry their favor. Everything in this world has its place and time—or does it?
[Edit: Added clarification]