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Into the distance a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction holding me fast how
Can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted Just an earth bound misfit I
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to guide my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Friction lock, set.
Mixture, rich
Propellers,fully forward
Flaps, set, ten degrees
Engine gauges and suction, check
Mixture set to maximum percent, recheck
Flight instruments
Altimeters, check both
(garbled word) - on
Navigation lights, on
Strobes, on
(to tower): Confirm 3-8-Echo ready for departure
(tower): Hello again, this is now 129.4
(to tower): 129.4. It's to go.
(tower): You may commence your takeoff, winds over 10 knots.
(to tower): 3-8-Echo
Easy on the brakes. Take it easy. Its gonna roll this time.
Just hand the power gradually, and it
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction holding me fast how
Can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted Just an earth bound misfit I
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to guide my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Friction lock, set.
Mixture, rich
Propellers,fully forward
Flaps, set, ten degrees
Engine gauges and suction, check
Mixture set to maximum percent, recheck
Flight instruments
Altimeters, check both
(garbled word) - on
Navigation lights, on
Strobes, on
(to tower): Confirm 3-8-Echo ready for departure
(tower): Hello again, this is now 129.4
(to tower): 129.4. It's to go.
(tower): You may commence your takeoff, winds over 10 knots.
(to tower): 3-8-Echo
Easy on the brakes. Take it easy. Its gonna roll this time.
Just hand the power gradually, and it
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There's no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, A state of bliss
Can't keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Lyrics submitted by Demau Senae, edited by Mellow_Harsher
Track duration: 04:55
"Learning to Fly" as written by Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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The song speaks of the peristannce required to become an aviator......and the perils....
"Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to guide my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone "
The actual flight sequence final verse sequence is just great good song writing the voice and keyboard it nails it....from an airplane pilots POV....as the wheels break ground the tension that had been built up is dissapated and the climb begins from fast tricyle to bird.....then the joy of seeing the earth not from a ground pointer point of view but seeing it the way birds see it....the blast of the band and the stratocaster.... yes brilliant arrangment...
I've really enjoyed reading the comments on here, and what each person's interpretation is of 'Learning To Fly'. I have always been a PF fan from the time I first heard DSOTM and The Wall. I enjoyed The Final Cut, and really enjoy AMLOR. I just wasn't sure about some of the lyric suggestions I was hearing from other posters, so I went into my vaults and dug out my original cassette tape of it, and lo and behold the J-card had all the lyrics on it! So I took the initiative to scan it and post the lyrics for 'Learning To Fly'. As a singer/songwriter/composer/musician myself I'm all about people hearing and understanding my lyrics correctly, so they can accurately determine their own feelings to them. Hopefully this will help those that weren't sure of some of the words.
johnnydubyah.com/…
All the best, and long live Pink Floyd!
Forgot to correct this in my post (as was already pointed out):
"A soul in tension that's..."
should be:
"My sole intention is.."
My comments were based on the correct lyric.
We are 'souls' (born of 'space'), that have awoken/arrived here on Earth, and have spent eternity trying to learn how to get out into 'space', back where we came from. We are already flying; 'reality' is the wind-swept field.
"Condition grounded but determined to try"
We are stuck 'here' because of our misconceptions about where 'here' actually is.
"Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies"
Always needing to get 'out there', not realizing we've already been and got the t-shirt.
"Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I"
The things we've learned, chosen to believe, and then consider 'known' have trapped us more completely on this planet. We, as a race, are confused and miseducated; repeating what we're told to believe to each successive generation, each generation having slightly less ability to think for themselves and discover REAL truths.
In Re: to "...the conclusion that i believe it is about being trapped in a trip.",
The 'trip' we are trapped in is 'reality'. We are made of organs, made of cells, made of atoms. Atoms are simply interference patterns between freqencies of energy and are mostly "empty space" inside. WE are only frequencies and are mostly empty space, in this "3D reality"; even Einstein knew this. Gravity is a "symptom" of the fundamental force, as is EVERY other observation made. Without defining the fundamental force first, how can you attempt to explain anything that stems from it? We use magnets all the time, but still don't understand the actual mechanic behind the 'action at a distance'. That's because matter is not real, nor are emotions, left, right, up, or down. Man created ALL distinctions, empowered them with his "beliefs", and now calls them "truth" and "knowledge", which we pass on to an increasingly smarter, but less intelligent populace (more knowledge, less wisdom). Feedback diminishes over time, when it is not passed on. When we stop communicating, stop talking, to each other, we end the feedback loop, and the "human signal" begins to degrade.
This began long before even the Great Pyramid was built and continues, today.
"The Turning Away", present day.
"Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies"
There has to be more than 'this'. Ironic since noone convinced Man that 'this' is real in the first place; Man did so on his own and believes it to be true with no proof, other than the fact that it appears, to us, that this 'I' person is in control of our bodies.
"Tongue tied and twisted Just an earth bound misfit, I"
Who is 'I'? Is 'I' your conscious or unconscious? Is there such a thing? How can you think universally, if everything you have been taught was defined in Earth-terms? If you can only control your brain approximately half of the time, who or what is running the place while you are 'gone'? Where do you 'go' to? Musical instruments make only 'noise', when their parts do not *work together* correctly.
Basically, the factors involved in flight and a literal, flying, human being, more specifically, were created by our belief in this limited (and complicated) reality. When we learn a new inward detail of the system, we re-affirm what we already 'know', add some new garbage to it, and then proceed to look for answers to the newly created questions. We build a scaled-up plane, and have scaled-up factors to overcome. If gravity were nullified, a single human child could toss an airplane into space easily. Yet, in our stubborn and infantile way, instead of reducing gravity's effect on us, we strive only to increase lift beyond it.
To learn to fly then, we need to remove our restrictions, not confirm and then attempt to overpower them.
With this in mind, I invite you to re-listen to YOUR favorite PF song! Forget, for a moment, what you think/believe/know about the song, the way you have always remembered it, and why you feel that way about it; remove the distinctions you've created and try to see a new, more universal meaning in the intimately familiar place you thought you had already fully explored.
I remember the video of this song and somehow is completing the meaning of the song.
The lyrics of the song are very methaphoric. It may be a invitation to achieve your deepest desires. The boy on the clif has a vision, of an indian, who invites him to try to fly. The boy is a peasent working on a field. His dream is about flying, he looks the plane that pass over his head, and after that, has this vision of this man, that guides him to the edge of the clif.
He achieve this goal of flying, paying with his life, but if we remember before jumping he puts 2 feathers on his arm, and after the jump his sould flyies represented by an eagle. The feathers is a ritualistic aid in his passing.
For me this song is not about flying using aircrafts is about achievieng the ultimate dream no matter what! Is about total liberation from a human, humiliating condition.
In the lyrics of the song we find some methaphors that may refer to a drug induced state of mind, but some of them may refear also to death.
For sure this song has many interpretations, and is somehow up to the listener to find his meaning.
They are "The sole intention is learning to fly"
Why do people always have to insert some mythical creature into lyrics that skew the meaning?
midway through this verse my interpretation led me to think that he is talking about attempting to get out of the trip, this is shown in the lines
"a soul in tension that's learning to fly
condition grounded but determined to try"
but after realising there is no way to release him from this trip so he continues to live it out and talks about his experiences from within the trip...
lines that support this are ...
"above the planet on a wing and a prayer
my grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air
across the clouds I see my shadow fly"
he talks about not being able to escape it and that it is an eternal state of mind
"a dream unthreatened by the morning light"
and talks about how he enjoys the state of mind and has grown to like it...
"there's no sensation to compare with this
suspended animation, a state of bliss"
throughout the song the chorus reassures us that this state of mind is always there and he tries to not let it affect him but it always does...
can't keep my mind from the circling sky
and the second line talks about how he doesnt belong and he is different to everyone else...
"tongue-tied & twisted just an earth-bound misfit"
and this is my interpretation of this song
any feedback or alternate interpretations are welcome...
for starters pink floyd repeatively use metaphors in alot of their songs, so why would this one be different, and secondly all you have to do is have a read of the lyrics with an open mind and you realise that flying and the lyrics of this song have little in common, which is especially common in the chorus'tongue-tied & twisted just an earth-bound misfit'
After reading the lyrics to this song i instantly thought of being under the influence of a drug, which wouldnt be uncommon for pink floyd to write a song about. but not everything matched up. so i read other peoples views on this song, which gave me ideas that it could be about love, suicide, death etc. but again not all the lyrics matched up
i re-read the lyrics again with an open mind and really thought about what it could be about and came to the conclusion that i believe it is about being trapped in a trip.
In the opening verse the lyrics are talking about first taking the trip and realising you are stuck in the trip..consider the lines
"a fatal attraction holding me fast, how
can I escape this irresistable grasp?"
and
"Into the distance, a ribbon of black
stretched to the point of no turning back"
it then goes onto talking about the realisation of being actually stuck in the trip, shown by the lines
"unheeded warnings, I tought I thought of everything
no navigator to guide my way home
unladened, empty and turned to stone"
part 1