This is possibly my favourite of all the Manics songs, although I feel The Holy Bible is the best all-round album. Looking at the imagery it links together sorrow, anxiety and insomnia in a vicious circle. When someone worries about something, they can't sleep, their mind loses focus, they worry more and so on. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to remember things ("a memory fades to a pale landscape"), relationships with other people are relegated to almost subliminal status ("You are an extinction, a desert heat" - both things that are technically there but have no physical substance, just an effect), the brain loses the ability to function properly ("Broken thoughts run through your empty mind").
After a major incident such as bereavement, separation or anxiety disorder there's the impact on life and especially sleep... when "innocence dies" it's not just a clean cut thing, it has major repercussions. And after some time of not sleeping it compounds the problems (lament blossoming) and makes the recipient feel even more wretched... a dog may be beaten and abused but at least it can have the luxury of sleep. Cobwebs on stone are the aftermath of old spiderwebs, serving no function but still there as a reminder, like the fragments of memory and anxiety that still remain in your mind and cause problems, so much so that even sleeping pills have no effect.
It's a great song, has a lot of personal relevance to me (having suffering from chronic insomnia for about thirteen years) and has fantastic imagery.
This is possibly my favourite of all the Manics songs, although I feel The Holy Bible is the best all-round album. Looking at the imagery it links together sorrow, anxiety and insomnia in a vicious circle. When someone worries about something, they can't sleep, their mind loses focus, they worry more and so on. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to remember things ("a memory fades to a pale landscape"), relationships with other people are relegated to almost subliminal status ("You are an extinction, a desert heat" - both things that are technically there but have no physical substance, just an effect), the brain loses the ability to function properly ("Broken thoughts run through your empty mind").
After a major incident such as bereavement, separation or anxiety disorder there's the impact on life and especially sleep... when "innocence dies" it's not just a clean cut thing, it has major repercussions. And after some time of not sleeping it compounds the problems (lament blossoming) and makes the recipient feel even more wretched... a dog may be beaten and abused but at least it can have the luxury of sleep. Cobwebs on stone are the aftermath of old spiderwebs, serving no function but still there as a reminder, like the fragments of memory and anxiety that still remain in your mind and cause problems, so much so that even sleeping pills have no effect.
It's a great song, has a lot of personal relevance to me (having suffering from chronic insomnia for about thirteen years) and has fantastic imagery.