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"
Remember how it all began
The apple and the fall of man
The price we paid
So the people say
Down the path of shame and let us dare
To bite the hand that fed us
Fairy tale the moral end
Wheel of fortune never turns again
Never turns again
The worst of it has come and gone
In the chaos of millennium
And the falling out
Of the doomsday crowd
Their last retreat is moving slow
They burn their bridges as they go
The heretic is beautified
Teach the harlot's child to smile
Rocked again by indecision
Should we make that small incision
Testify, to the bleeding heart inside
We cut, we scratched
We ran, and we slashed
And when he opened up at last
Found a cul de sac
Deepened black
Of smoke and ash
Deepened black
Smoke and ash
The wicked king of parody
Is kissing all his enemies
On the seventh day
On the seventh week
The tyrant's voice has softened now
But just for one forgiving hour
Before the rise of his
Iron fist again
Fist again
I've come tonight
I've come to know
The way we are the way we'll go
And to measure this
The width of the wide abyss
I've come to you in restless sleep
Were all your dreams turned bitter sweet
With voodoo doll philosophies
Day gloy holy trinities
The wicked raft that leaves the shore
Of ferries drunken souls a board
Pilgrims march to Compostela
Of visions of their saint in yellow
Follow deep in trance
Lost in a catatonic dance
Know no future
Damn the past
Blind war, ecstatic
To save their lives
The apple and the fall of man
The price we paid
So the people say
Down the path of shame and let us dare
To bite the hand that fed us
Fairy tale the moral end
Wheel of fortune never turns again
Never turns again
The worst of it has come and gone
In the chaos of millennium
And the falling out
Of the doomsday crowd
Their last retreat is moving slow
They burn their bridges as they go
The heretic is beautified
Teach the harlot's child to smile
Rocked again by indecision
Should we make that small incision
Testify, to the bleeding heart inside
We cut, we scratched
We ran, and we slashed
And when he opened up at last
Found a cul de sac
Deepened black
Of smoke and ash
Deepened black
Smoke and ash
The wicked king of parody
Is kissing all his enemies
On the seventh day
On the seventh week
The tyrant's voice has softened now
But just for one forgiving hour
Before the rise of his
Iron fist again
Fist again
I've come tonight
I've come to know
The way we are the way we'll go
And to measure this
The width of the wide abyss
I've come to you in restless sleep
Were all your dreams turned bitter sweet
With voodoo doll philosophies
Day gloy holy trinities
The wicked raft that leaves the shore
Of ferries drunken souls a board
Pilgrims march to Compostela
Of visions of their saint in yellow
Follow deep in trance
Lost in a catatonic dance
Know no future
Damn the past
Blind war, ecstatic
To save their lives
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I'm surprised I never posted in response to this. Frogger, your post was... wow. Excellent research and interpretation. There's even more to this song than I had originally suspected, and wow, I'm in awe.
I absolutely love this song, as with so many by Natalie. Such depth in her writing, and as always, her voice says in many ways more than the words.