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Cocaine flame in my bloodstream
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
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But now knowing the lyric is "straight", and he's coming to terms with the fact that he has chosen this lifestyle over her...it breaks my heart a little :/
When he says this, I imagine the picture actually being of him and her back when they were together. He uses the word "picture" in two ways in this line. The first way is the literal in which the picture is an actual picture. The second way is a metaphor implying that the "picture of me" is the person he was before, the "happy person" he was before.
His way of life has carried him too far from home, and too far from himself.
raylamontagne.com/us/music/trouble/…
Evidence:
- Lyrics on Ray's website
- The deliberate way he sang the live version at Bonaroo, 2005
- A functional set of ears
Agreed with many of your comments, but I would add this...the most important line in here for me is the chorus, the thresh hold of the song, "still don't know what love means".
It is true, but also too easy to say the song is about substance abuse and lost love.
Who here "know what love means"?
That is what "gets" me every time I reply this, the yearning mystery of love, being ravaged by it, by the object of his desire, the picture in his pocket as he discovers himself again, disheveled from diving deep in the bottle. What does love mean? What kind of a pathetic an insufficient thing is a human for the hugeness of our longing, our yearning, for love. There is nothing to be done, no way to go straight, start the self project of a job, a house, a friendly persona to fulfill the bargain. No act I have done in service of love has ever, ever been able to pay the debt and delicious pain of longing I feel for someone I love. We're not talking happy stable relationship emotions here, but the rawness of the soul. I also love the line about a hammer, and a woman like you. His rawness turns her into an object here, (a fricken hammer!) but one that he needs so much for his own survival that it is deeply moving objectification. I father is a man like this, and he got the hammer part sorted, but not the woman. Most women I now would love to be wanted that much, claimed with directness by a man that knows what he needs, in this case a broken man, but more real than most because of it.
"My eyes been stung with dust and blind"
should be
"My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind"