I don't really think that We Shall All Be Healed has that much of a cohesive storyline, it's more like a series of impressions. I think this one is just about how fast and wild it is to be young and high and on fire, and then how that manic energy gets diluted after a while...the transition from "I can remember when we were in high school" to "Now we are practical men of the world" sort of cements this for me.
Unrelatedly, the line about "shoving our heads/straight into the guts of the stove" reminds me of Lucien Carr (on-and-off lover of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg), who put his head in a gas oven as "a work of art" and was subsequently hospitalized as suicidal. So...whenever I hear it I think of a bunch of half-mad intoxicated beat kids driving around in a green automobile.
I don't really think that We Shall All Be Healed has that much of a cohesive storyline, it's more like a series of impressions. I think this one is just about how fast and wild it is to be young and high and on fire, and then how that manic energy gets diluted after a while...the transition from "I can remember when we were in high school" to "Now we are practical men of the world" sort of cements this for me. Unrelatedly, the line about "shoving our heads/straight into the guts of the stove" reminds me of Lucien Carr (on-and-off lover of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg), who put his head in a gas oven as "a work of art" and was subsequently hospitalized as suicidal. So...whenever I hear it I think of a bunch of half-mad intoxicated beat kids driving around in a green automobile.
I always thought of Sylvia Plath's suicide-by-stove, but that makes sense too.
I always thought of Sylvia Plath's suicide-by-stove, but that makes sense too.