So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
I looked up at the tallest building
Felt it falling down
I could feel my balance shifting
Everything was moving around
These streets so fixed and solid
All shimmering haze
And everything that I relied on disappeared
Downside up, upside down
Take my weight from the ground
Falling deep in the sky
Slipping in the unknown
All the strangers look like family
All the family looks so strange
The only constant I am sure of
Is this accelerating rate of change
Downside up, upside down
Take my weight off the ground
Falling deep in the sky
Slipping into the unknown
I stand here
Watch you spinning
Until I am drawn in
A centripetal force
You pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Felt it falling down
I could feel my balance shifting
Everything was moving around
These streets so fixed and solid
All shimmering haze
And everything that I relied on disappeared
Downside up, upside down
Take my weight from the ground
Falling deep in the sky
Slipping in the unknown
All the strangers look like family
All the family looks so strange
The only constant I am sure of
Is this accelerating rate of change
Downside up, upside down
Take my weight off the ground
Falling deep in the sky
Slipping into the unknown
I stand here
Watch you spinning
Until I am drawn in
A centripetal force
You pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
Pull me in
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This song is def a twin to "Unfair" (a song she has been quoted as saying is about falling in love with someone who is already in a relationship) so it is presumably about the same person. Given the references to buying an apartment and not being able to see her love interest "after tonight," it's most likely that she's moving away and she'll "wait a day to break the bad news" (i.e. notifying him that she's leaving once she's already gone).
And, of course, the fact that she sees in him a fellow "idealist" and "dreamer" (terms commonly given to people with the INFP personality on the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)) portends that she'll always be left wondering if they would've been perfect together.
The Night We Met
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This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Mental Istid
Ebba Grön
Ebba Grön
This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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This is about bronies. They communicate by stomping.
Obviously, it's a story where the world falls upside down/downside up....
I first heard this song when I saw the "Growing Up Live" DVD. It was spectacular to watch him perform with his daughter. And it was absolutely amazing the stage stunt they performed for it. I highly recommend seeing this live.
Life changing event turns your life upside down.
There's a lot of physics in this song, no? Acceleration, and centripetal force...I mean, it's a metaphor, but still...
Based on how Peter Gabriel desribes this song in his DVD Growing Up, I think its a play on how much we rely on our own physical laws here on our tiny planet. Perhaps after death or within some type of metaphysical self-discovery we can truly understand that there's more powers that be and that love can exsist throughout the Universe.
If I remember, In the DVD PG imagines laying on the ground gazing at the stars and imagining everything flipped.
I think you got it cooses. You articulated what was swirling around in my head. Love, as hard as it is to define, certainly defies our known laws of nature, thus it can exist throughout the universe and beyond. What we relate to as up or down, in the world of love, can be juxtaposed, in an orgy of up and down, in and out, back and forth, never and forever.
I love this song. Peter Gabriel in a duet with Liz Fraser? Yes, please! To me, the lyrics describe the process of dying and going toward an afterlife. The physical laws that hold us down on this planet no longer apply, moving toward infinite love where “all the strangers look like family”. I’ve always thought of Solsbury Hill as having a similar theme, too.
This song is about life changing events but I don’t think it’s death. I first heard this when I found out I was pregnant; I definitely associate it with pregnancy and childbirth. It’s on my Labour playlist and I think it’s lovely!