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This excruciating exercise in navel-gazing is
actually less that solely and more a convenience to me in remembering where
the hell these things came from. Even the lines that are my own more or less
came to me before I had a meaning or context assigned to them: the idea was
to allow them in, on the grounds that if I thought about it, or changed them
slightly, or moved them around, the reason they occurred to me in the context
of this song (whose overall subject was clear to me) would gradually reveal
itself to me. Then I could decide whether to make them clearer or not
(usually, not). The difference between this approach and worry-analyzing
every line down to a nub is that I was looking vaguely off into the distance
rather than staring at the line through a microscope. For (many) more words
on the way I think about lyrics, see here.
I've also indicated which lines are original, and the sources of the other
lines. Annotate the capstone (mine): This
was probably the first phrase to occur to me. The words just seemed
"Stipey" to me, in their vaguely old-fashioned air, their reference
to some sort of mercantile/literary or architectural register. Anyway: the
suggestion is that a "capstone" (as a literally crowning glory)
shouldn't probably need annotating, qualifying, or otherwise hedging
information. That it does suggests it's a bit of a sham, a false front.
(Also, the first of many imperatives.) and prepare three days' walk milk scattered cows (mine): Again,
the rural thing seemed Stipey to me. The suggestion here is a lot of work
with no real prospect of reward. Sign your name on the shattered (mine): The
missing word is "line," and the reference is (of course)
"dotted line." Idea? People being asked to agree to something
broken, something fucked-up or even tragic. Cart before swept behind (mine): The
first part comes from "don't put the cart before the horse"; don't
act rashly, without forethought, heedless of consequence. Absent the entire
phrase, the suggestion is that the cart already is before the horse. The
second line: What is swept up behind horses in the street? How is that
product regarded? Disposable, worthless. The stanza as a whole, then, talks
about those who've signed on to a dubious enterprise heedlessly engaged upon
who are betrayed and abandoned as worthless. March to grotto banjo fence (mine, I think): The
chorus is a lot of abstract images from battle, really. "March" is
obvious; a grotto is a cave (which makes it a slightly more specific
reference, as not all battles bear any relation to caves. A recent one did,
though, dinnit.) "Banjo fence" is a barbed-wire fence; I'm not sure
if someone had used the term before, but I liked it. I suppose the musical
reference (being played) helped, as did my goofy sense of Stipeyness about
the line. Banjos are Stipey; they just are, okay? Who needs calamine? (mine?): Much more sound than sense, probably. The
only real idea is that calamine lotion relieves unpleasantness; asking
"who needs it?" might be a genuine inquiry, but it might also be
merely dismissive. "Calamine" is also an ore of zinc (either zinc
carbonate or zinc silicate – thank you Wikipedia) - and so I liked the fact that "calamine"
in this vocal was nearly right on top of another chemical reference, to
"sugar of lead" (see below in the background vocals section). Also,
the chorus is the only part of the song whose lyrics rhyme:
"calamine" with "define" sequentially, but also
"calamine/refine" simultaneously and "define/line"
simultaneously. I can't do the math on how many ways that rhymes, then. Air to blur and settle: The
first part of the phrase ("air to blur") is from a cartoon in Magnet magazine (capitalized,
referring to the bands Air and Blur: it was the first volume of an
"Indie Hipsters' Dictionary" or something). I liked the idea of air
blurring; what would it do afterwards? It might, of course, settle. Overall,
I think this is about explosions (air appears to blur in heat, of course, and
an explosion produces both that effect and the more radical
"blurring" from smoke, debris, etc.) Chimney-pots and slate removed: This
is from the fabulous Beaufort Wind Scale, subject of a fine recent book by
Scott Huler (Defining the Wind) and
addressed by me here. It describes the results of a "strong gale." Depth and volume define: The
first three words are from the original spam alt-text source, itself taken
from The Island of Dr. Moreau:
"its depth and volume testified to the puma." I think its context
here refers back to that " air to blur and
settle" line above: cratered. I can study rain: This
is borrowed from a line from Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues," as
cited in the Johnson box set liner notes. I think the annotator is wrong;
there's another line in the song about a "distillery," and I think
Johnson's just repeating the last three syllables of that word. Regardless:
the line's evocative, and (side note) it's amusing to see graduate students
huff and puff over the significance in Johnson's song of a line that may not
even exist (as you can do if you google " 'study rain' robert
johnson"). What it meant to me was somewhere between and among
"pointless activity" and "trying to figure out this unpleasant
phenomenon, which comes to us as if from above, out of our control." So
again: helplessness, frustration. The variant of this line, before the
bridge, is " Who can steady...?": another
"who?" question, and another (obvious, punning) elision, of
"reins." Testified to the puma I saw Nail the wind to the water Tie the flame to the ground: These
lines have been floating around in my head for years. Both actions (more
imperatives...) are impossible, fruitless, and deny the essential nature of
what is being attempted to be captured, limited, or installed. Whose face on the coin the ransom bought? (mine): I suppose there's some suggestion of
the bible verse about rendering to Caesar here, which raises the question of
what's owed to whom. And why: "ransom" obviously suggests something
shady about the transaction. And that the question "whose face..."
needs to be asked suggests, again, subterfuge, deception: counterfeiting. Civil twilight resent the shadows (mine): The
relation of these two lines, grammatically, is hazy, penumbral. "Civil
twilight" is a meteorological term (I wrote about it here), but it suggests a dimming of both civility and
civil society generally. I could theorize for hours on the role of resentment
in the current political alignment, but I think it's particularly strong
among right-wingers and fundamentalists. If I'd wanted to punch this point
more clearly, I might have said "resent their shadows." Counterfeit the dictionary (mine): To
distort language or to lie is one thing; but to pass off an entire
repertoire, an environment, an ideology, a language, as being real, true, and
legitimate, when it's a falsehood, a lie, a fabrication…well that's another
thing, and much worse. Bury armies
( mine): During
the first Gulf War, Harvest fountains (mine): Black gold. Background vocals (beneath the chorus) barrel a peck and: Among the last things written. For some
reason, the line from the old song "a bushel and a peck" popped
into my head. That made no sense at all to me, either directly or as
reference to that old song, so I was about to dump it when the idea to change
"bushel" to "barrel" occurred. Now it made sense - oil
comes in barrels ya know. Still later I realized that one could really go for
a stretch and find a pun on OPEC in there... the sugar of lead
technology refines: From
this page - which, incidentally, someone running a "weird
web" site either stole from my site or, less likely, got from the same
source I got it from. Anyway, the basis for that site is a wacked-out letter
that, nonetheless, offers several evocative phrases (which I've therefore
stolen liberally from). "Sugar of lead" is an old name for lead
acetate, which for its sweetness was actually used by the Romans in wine.
Tastes sweet; is poison. You are allowed to assume that "lead
technology" might be bullets too. under the old state who?: Munged
from the original spam alt-text which read "State who, under the old
electoral law, have the elective"… This is, apparently, from Orestes A.
Brownson's The American Republic
and comes from a passage discussing enfranchisement of the former
Confederates after the Civil War. (You can find the entire text in a couple
of places by googling the whole phrase in quotation marks.) I trust by this
point that the significance of references to (dis)enfranchisement is clear -
although the Civil War context is fairly irrelevant, I think. There's also,
then, a second reference to the disappearance of the old American republic.
This is as good a place as any to note that (again, almost completely by
accident - which was the point) the idea of "the old desert and skies
blue undraw a sanded line (mine): Here's an example of why I'm doing this commentary. I
originally had forgotten that the "blue skies" come from the poem
"The Fourth Dimension" at this site, also the source of "sugar of lead
technology" - and so I thought I'd just cobbled them together nearly as
rhyming filler. In fact, given that context, it's essentially a reference to
the same question asked below ("who will beat the drum?") The
second part refers to "drawing a line in the sand," which is
usually a challenge; it also refers to the way the borders of Middle Eastern
nations were essentially drawn. "Sanded" also puns on "sanded
down" - worn, eroded. (behind the second verse) signify to the water testify to the ground (mine): These essentially cobble
together lines from elsewhere in the song. "Signify" mostly is here
because it rhymes with " testify" (and can
be synonymous); both lines return to the notion of fruitlessness: the water
cannot grasp sense, and the ground cannot hear. understate the frequency: Adapted from the spam alt-text;
rephrased to refer to the lessons learned from who will beat beat the drum?: Also from the "sugar of lead technology" site. From a poem
on the site called "The Fourth Dimension"; the idea seems to be,
who maintains, who preserves, who questions. It was convenient that my two
main sources (this page, and the spam alt-text) both had "who?"
questions in them - and in fact, "who?" is (as recorded) the very
last line of the song. (in the bridge) understate under the old under the old state who?: All
from the Brownson spam alt-text. Essentially, a dis- and re-assembly of those
phrases to refer back to a handful of other lines in the song. |