| The Residents – Constantinople Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Except it's more like The Second Coming (http://www.online-literature.com/donne/780/) The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? |
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| The Beatles – I Am the Walrus Lyrics | 37 years ago |
| Incidentally, the chant at the end is "everybody's got one", and I presume it refers to genitalia - everybody has genitalia, that of which it is impolite to speak in public (was, in the 60s, at least.) It's the kind of thing a parent in the 60s might say to reassure their child. | |
| The Beatles – I Am the Walrus Lyrics | 37 years ago |
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Alice in Wonderland also had the character Humpty Dumpty who was an egg, and who said his words mean (paraphrased) "precisely what he meant by them, neither more nor less." I think Lewis Carrol was enquiring as to whether that is even possible. That may well be the 'eggman' reference. The singer's both the Walrus and the Egg/Man. Not the Walrus and the Carpenter. |
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| The Beatles – Strawberry Fields Forever Lyrics | 37 years ago |
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The form of the song is one side of a conversation, lapsing into monologue in which Lennon's trying to explain to an imagined audience what it's like to be Lennon, see things the way he sees them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Fields_Forever has some interesting reportage on this song. Lennon said "I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius–'I mean it must be high or low'" Lennon described the song as "psycho-analysis set to music" The problem he's trying to solve is how to be someone when a solitary genius (or fool, always the self-doubt) alone in a tree, on a wavelength nobody else can tune into, although he's reassuring us that the problem is not too bad for him. He invites us to try on one of the solutions he has recourse to, which is a kind of nihilism. "Let me take you down to Strawberry Fields", where "nothing is real" and consequently nothing matters enough that anybody is going to be hung (I suspect Lennon felt that people were going to hang him, for being too different ("You know how hard it can be, the way things are going they're gonna crucify me," and I guess that's kinda prophetic in view of the way he died.) So Lennon is describing one way he tries to cope with being different, seeing things differently (and perhaps more accurately than those around him,) by keeping his eyes closed, and by purposefully misunderstanding what he knows and sees. Denying his gifts, perhaps. It results in his own identity being eroded ("getting hard to be someone") but he's coping ("but it's alright,") and in any case "it doesn't matter much to me" ... perhaps he's saying he doesn't need to "be someone." This is a kind of nihilism. Lennon presents it as a way of getting by, not being hung. Of being by not being himself. We see other instances of this nihilism in other Lennon songs, "I know what it's like to be dead"/"making me feel like I've never been born" and of his rejection of it. Finally, "Always, no, *sometimes* think it's me," is, I think Lennon saying that he's reconciled to just being different but is seeking reassurance from the audience, "but *you* know I know and it's a dream" in which I think he is saying that at least the person to whom he's speaking knows that Lennon's perceptions aren't completely unreal, and that the rest of the world (as people see it) is not real. So here, he's finally getting the courage to admit to himself (through his imaginary audience) that he in fact does possess unusual faculties, and is trusting in their validity. Finally, "I think I know of thee, ah yes, but it's all wrong. That is I think I disagree" is how I've always heard the last lines. I think he's now trying to apply his unique faculties to understanding or describe the imagined audience, his interlocutor, or perhaps more generally speaking of the possibility of knowing the other in their subjectivity (I find the use of 'thee' interesting, perhaps reflecting Buber's treatment of what Sartre called 'concrete relations with the Other', or perhaps just generally honouring the Other ... bear in mind, Lennon's just returned from the "We're bigger than Jesus" tour of the USA, and trying to deal with the absurdly extremely negative and irrational uproar of that.) In any case, having "taken us down" to Strawberry Fields, Lennon's no closer to comprehending others and himself as part of the same world, but he has found the pure nihilism of Strawberry Fields untenable. In Strawberry Fields, he's just asking, I think, to be understood ("Love is asking to be loved.") I hope I have gone some way, not that it matters much to him. |
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