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In Liverpool
On Sunday
No traffic
On the avenue
The light is pale and thin
Like you
No sound, down
In this part of town
Except for the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
Homesick for a clock
That told the same time
Sometimes you made no sense to me
If you lie on the ground
In somebody's arms
You'll probably swallow some of their history
And the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
I'll be the girl who sings for my supper
You'll be the monk whose forehead is high
He'll be the man who's already working
Spreading a memory all through the sky
In Liverpool
On Sunday
No reason to even remember you now
Except for the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
In Liverpool
In Liverpool
On Sunday
No traffic
On the avenue
The light is pale and thin
Like you
No sound, down
In this part of town
Except for the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
Homesick for a clock
That told the same time
Sometimes you made no sense to me
If you lie on the ground
In somebody's arms
You'll probably swallow some of their history
And the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
I'll be the girl who sings for my supper
You'll be the monk whose forehead is high
He'll be the man who's already working
Spreading a memory all through the sky
In Liverpool
On Sunday
No reason to even remember you now
Except for the boy in the belfry
He's crazy, he's throwing himself
Down from the top of the tower
Like a hunchback in heaven
He's ringing the bells in the church
For the last half an hour
He sounds like he's missing something
Or someone that he knows he can't
Have now and if he isn't
I certainly am
In Liverpool
In Liverpool
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"Homesick for a clock that told the same time" - she's longing to have been born at the same time as he.
"Sometimes you made no sense to me." - Lennon's love of non-sensical, surrealist lyrics is hardly mysterious.
"You'll be the monk whose forehead is high." - Later in life, Lennon's forehead was high.
"He sounds like he's missing something or someone that he knows he can't have now and if he isn't I certainly am..." - She laments that she can't ever 'have' the dead, unobtainable Lennon.
Mystery solved!
tendencies, having only recently remembered trauma from 30+ years ago.
To me, the boy in the belfry is the part of the psyche that holds the
trauma until it's safe enough to feel it and grow past it. The bells
are a signal from the unconscious that life isn't okay the way it is:
the horrors of the past must eventually be reckoned with. The
longings and homesickness are a side effect of this type of coping
mechanism: some good things have to be banished along with the bad, to
be remembered only when it's safe to remember everything.
So much hinges on that line....
((paying verbal tribute in order for him to return her affections (worship) while he enjoys being the pious lover.))
"I'll be the girl who sings for my supper
You'll be the monk whose forehead is high" . . .
Does anyone know what this means? It has confused me for awhile.