bax has it kinda right...people think of love in terms of the shape of a heart, a perfect shape of two mirrored halves joining together. However, what love actually is can be fist-shaped, disfiguring, and sometimes hollow. This song is about unrealistic expectations of love and relationships. She wore that pendant as her ideal of their relationship while the house represents its reality. The house was still standing, but there was too much damage: "Far too many to repair in the time that we were there." Before they could mend the relationship from one battle, others cropped up and nothing got resolved. She lost her idealization (ruby pendant) of love in the reality (the hole in the wall) of the pressure of dysfunctional relating. It's said that Browne wrote this about Daryl Hannah, and given his past hurt, it's likely that he refused to allow emotional intimacy its full rein.
bax has it kinda right...people think of love in terms of the shape of a heart, a perfect shape of two mirrored halves joining together. However, what love actually is can be fist-shaped, disfiguring, and sometimes hollow. This song is about unrealistic expectations of love and relationships. She wore that pendant as her ideal of their relationship while the house represents its reality. The house was still standing, but there was too much damage: "Far too many to repair in the time that we were there." Before they could mend the relationship from one battle, others cropped up and nothing got resolved. She lost her idealization (ruby pendant) of love in the reality (the hole in the wall) of the pressure of dysfunctional relating. It's said that Browne wrote this about Daryl Hannah, and given his past hurt, it's likely that he refused to allow emotional intimacy its full rein.