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The litebrite's now black and white
Cause you took apart a picture that wasn't right
Pitch burning on a shining sheet
The only maker that you'd want to meet
The dying man in a living room
Who's shadow paces the floor
Who'll take you out in the open door
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
He said really I just want to dance
Good and evil matched perfect it's a great romance
I can deal with some physic pain
If it'll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in the kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy
The cold comfort of the in between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Cause you took apart a picture that wasn't right
Pitch burning on a shining sheet
The only maker that you'd want to meet
The dying man in a living room
Who's shadow paces the floor
Who'll take you out in the open door
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
He said really I just want to dance
Good and evil matched perfect it's a great romance
I can deal with some physic pain
If it'll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in the kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy
The cold comfort of the in between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Lyrics submitted by angelofthesilence, edited by ghost06, Mellow_Harsher
Track duration: 03:58
"A Fond Farewell" as written by Steven P. Smith
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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He said really I just want to dance
Good and evil matched perfect it's a great romance
I can deal with some physic pain
If it'll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in the kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
Fond farewell to a friend
Living the life of a heroin addict, to me is quite the romantic adventure. It is just filled with such ups and downs, with such great dramas and struggles, pain and relief. When I hear "...really I just wanna dance. good and evil matched perfect, it's a great romance." I think of this desire of wanting to be able to balance as a functional human being and a regular heroin user. And then like I said, the romance of using heroin, the pain of withdrawal and the struggle of getting the money, all the negatives compared to the final relief of doing that shot. And this is a daily event. Constant pain and then a bit of relief everyday; everyday the struggle continues.
And then the line "I can deal with some psychic pain, if it will slow down my higher brain. Veins full of disappearing ink, vomiting in the kitchen sink, disconnecting from the missing link, this is not my life."
It makes me think of the psychological struggle of heroin addiction, the justification of all the emotional/psychological pain for those all too short moment of being high. Any junky understands the brilliance of "veins full of disappearing ink" I think he is just talking about how short the high lasts in full blown addiction. After injecting heroin for years it's like injecting disappearing ink. Instead of being high for hours, it becomes high for a few minutes, normal for a few hours.
Again the chorus makes me think of this internal struggle of knowing that being strung out is a horrible way to live, but recognizing that it is impossible to win. That addiction will always be there. And so you give up on that one part of you trying to do right. And your brain justifies it with denial. "This is not my life, this not want I'm like" this isn't who I really am kind of thinking
"I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy"
Again it's that internal struggle, letting go of the good part and follow the addiction.
The cold comfort of the in between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried
This is not my life
The cold comfort of the in between to me again is about being in active heroin addiction. For somebody who has used for years there is comfort, normalcy in that life style, but really it's a pretty cold and harsh way to live. The next couple lines capture more of those feelings. A little less than a human being, feeling low, feeling incomplete. A little less than a happy high. After years of heroin use you don't really feel it the same. The addiction in you makes you think that next shot is going to be so good, if you just do a little bit more, that will feel so good. But by the time you actually take that shot it always falls short. A little less that a suicide. That life is a life of self destruction of soul destruction. Living as a heroin addict is close to killing yourself but it falls a little short. and then the last line "the only things youve really tried" captures that the feelings of wasted time. So much time has to be devoted to just not feeling sick. For most of the people out there reading this, for a heroin addict to feel the way you do now, they got to get money, go wherever they go to get drugs, and find a vein they can stick a blunt needle into. And they got to do this every 20 hours, or 12 hours or 8 hours. It becomes impossible to do anything else. And even if the addict gets clean there is still that constant drive to self destruct. Anyways, brilliant artist, brilliant song.
Thanks Elliott for making the world more beautiful.
Pitch burning on a shining sheet
The only maker that you'd want to meet
The dying man in a living room
Who's shadow paces the floor
i think "pitch burning on a shining sheet" is a reference to maybe smoking tar heroin on foil and that it is the only thing he can imagine making him more comfortable while in a period of trying to kick addiction. "the dying man in a living room who's shadow paces the floor" just reminds me of the countless days and nights of withdrawal where psychology i was in such a bad place it made the actual physical withdrawals seem trivial. it would drive me to the brink. waiting on someone to call, cursing that someone didn't come through, etc. typical addictive behavior.
anyway, i enjoyed your interpretation. take care of yourself.
a little less than a happy high
a little less than a suicide
the only things that you ever tried
three in one... that he saw his aspirations in life could be tied up in one action which spans the entire emotional spectrum is truly profound
In a way conveying that he misses that life but he's moved on and is completely over this junk he's doing or whatever sort of behavior he's talking about. Thus " This is no my life... It's just a fond farewell to a friend" . Its like an internal dialogue that you get when your falling back on old vices or habits. A very deep portrayal of doing heroin is what I imagine him writing about and falling back on that day. " The cold comfort of the in between" him talking about his sober life. Overall its about fighting off old habits you may relapse on I believe. Another great euphoric song written by Elliot R.I.P.
volmiting in the kitchen sink
............
a dying man in the living room
all these sugest to me he is talking about heroin.
and when he says "this is not my life, it's a fond farewell to a friend" it;s like he's seeing himself do heroin and doesn't see it as his true self and that he's saying good bye to that part of himself
The Lite Brite, for those too young to know about it, was a creative toy that consisted of a box fronted by a panel of holes in a honeycomb pattern and containing a lightbulb. You put a black paper template in the frame, which mad marked on it the pattern that showed how to insert translucent pegs of various colors. As you inserted a peg into the panel it would break through the paper and let the light come through, colored whatever color the peg was. In this way you could create a picture where each peg was like a pixel. It was a beautiful contraption. I remember the jingle in the commercials went like this "Lite Brite making things with light, out-of-sight making things with Lite Brite"
After you were done (or if you gave up because the picture "wasn't right") you could simply take the pegs out, leaving a black paper with white light shining through the empty holes. This is why the Lite Brite "is now black and white"
My interpretation is that killing oneself is compared to the simple action of deconstructing a displeasing picture. The metaphor seems to point to the idea of another chance in a next life, since you could always put a new fresh template paper into the frame and start on a new picture.
Anyway, as a contemporary of Elliott's who also was entranced by this beautiful toy, I wanted to share this bit in hopes of enriching other's enjoyment of this amazing songwriter. Requiescat in pace, Elliott.
In my estimation Elliott's primary gift to our earth is revealing an inner emotional 'god' in him that is buried in all of us and this song seems to be doing that.
The meaning of this song will not be very convincing until you see my explanation of his lyrics for 'Kings Crossing' and 'Coast to Coast' in conjunction with this. I don't deny that this song has some relation to the failure of drug induced experience but then so can spiritual experiences with those 'crippling true aids.' I am reminded of the lead singer of Depeche Mode's explanation of why he was hooked on Heroin: 'it's better then love what you feel, disconnected from everything, hovering over your quivering body and outside of it.' Our Spirit may be in secret pain all the time cause it is hardly ever awake in it's own identity caught down here in the body that is inside it, the bad soma... (living is more painful then death to those with a spirit, like Jim Morrison who said this. And this flesh is weak but the Spirit is willing (willing if one is artificially induced by drugs out of every-day sleep/consensual reality in order to then remember to be willing to conquer sense existence, or, much preferably: self initiating oneself to overcome ordinary sense existence). Almost all ancient cultures religions teach the Spirit is somewhat antagonistic to the physical world, almost like good in relation to evil, when it manifests. And this creates the friction that can develop a semi-eternal soul vessel/ship crystallized for the next life that is in between but it is hard to get right. That's what I think this song is about. Usually it's just one explosion in the lab after another and you end up a repetitive safe lunatic or a whacked out irresponsible tramp by life's end.
In any case...he begins each verse with his spirit narrating about his lower self here (his physical bodily existence here). And then he switches and sings with his soul the chorus that shows this physical existence of his here is just a sort of temporal shadow of a shadow of the Spirit, a fond farewell to this Friend (The Spirit being: 'the Friend' as Sufi's call the Spirit, or 'The Host').
five brights that are black and white/(it sounds though like he says 'love buds that are blackened wax')
[the five centers in man: thinking, feeling, physical, 'higher brain,' as he calls this one later on in the song by name, and higher emotional or 'emotional body.' The latter is often called 'the horse' in esoteric literature and is probably what he speaks of in speed trials: 'the horse in the cathedral painted black...no one knows where you are, standing in place...speed trials.']
he took apart his picture that wasn't right
[this is a recurring theme in his lyrics, 'pictures stepped on lying on the floor of their room.' - Drive All Over Town and see his song 'Pictures of Me': 'saw you and me on the coin-op TV, frozen in fear...so sick and tired of all these pictures of me, completely wrong, totally wrong...everybodies dying just to get the disease.' he is getting out of formatory black and white thinking and entering the drinking of eternal memory (impressions/higher soma) that happens at 'judgement day' so to speak after death and is really solely oneself solely judging oneself as Meister Eckhart says Christianity actually teaches about the 'judgement day' (and was Winston's only escape from Big Brother in 1984: His own Memory that cannot be taken and that he can call his own). It can be started before death though: self remembering, that leads to the formation of a soul beyond this forgetfull and polarized black and white fragmented B-flick picture life. It is what Dennis Hopper was getting at in that movie where he painfully takes photo's of himself to see himself, the faces he wears, as he really is, looking at them. This is an outward act of an inward state.]
pitch burning on a shining shoe ...or more likely: 'bitch burning on a shining sheet' (or even more likely he enunciated so it would mean both)
[exoterically this means his physical body=pitch over his soul = the shoe...the body is a black and burning fodder or pitch for it, in comparison to it, just the wax over it. It's just like the egg white is nourishment to the yolk...and then the yolk is for the embryo/spirit. so also is the pitch to the shoe to the foot. Esoterically he is making fun of the veil over the real meaning of all his songs here: 'amore, amore!' ('bitch burning on a shining sheet')...he was always so much more about other business as well (and primarily - see his song 'the Biggest Lie'). So he sarcastically calls this front a 'bitch burning on a shining sheet,' a part of the black and white picture of him he is taking apart for you here, and then he says it is the 'primary maker' of other people's: 'the only maker that you want or knew' though he himself was 'disconnecting from the missing link' ie..mere animal existence that births people back into it's existence through their over attraction in the wrong way to: 'the only maker that they want to meet' = a bitch on a shining sheet' ]
the only maker that you want to meet/want or knew/ want anew
[our physical body is the alchemical 'philosophers stone' or 'maker' that must be transmorphed to crystallize the soul in us and it is what we 'knew of.' bleary eyed 'spiritualist' Christians are ignorant to have forgotten this thinking they can just get their souls saved.]
a dying man in a living room/womb/wound
[the soul in the body or the body in the soul, either way it's true it is 'a dying man in a living womb' until both are transformed - see the Aymara's teaching on this who live in Peru and are about the oldest living untouched ancient culture still alive. We are trapped in Samsara through the VeeJay repeater here until we awake... heh.]
who's shadow paces the floor/fall/foal
[this shadow is called 'fetch' by Irish Metaphysics (ha, ha, yes there is such thing: see Morganwg) and the psychic or moon body by Graeco-Roman and Egyptian Schools. it is often called the double or 'doppleganger' by German Tradition. it is tied in often to the greater daemon/angel presiding over ones lineage that comes for you at death and that one must get beyond through or be absorbed back into..."the double will come and collect my soul and encumber me.." - Angelene, P.J. Harvey. Of the foal: If he knew of Sumerian Occultism that treats of the body as the embryo of transformation drawn in the hieroglyphic of 'the foal' then he may be saying this. And the double paces the foal in us. the 'foal' is also this illusory physical passing earth and it's maker and continuater for men stuck here: a bitch burning on a shining sheet. 'Little Ones' is a similar archaic term for initiates very akin to this embryonic term 'foal' and it is a title Christ used and Paul and Job and so on in it's traditional veiled manner...one beginning on the spiritual path in order to crack out from this...if the modern group 'foal' knows of this I wouldn't be suprised...]
will take you out in an open door [that's self ex-plane atory]
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
it's not what I'm like
it's just a fond a farewell to the friend
I couldn't get things right:
a fond farewell to the frame
he said really I just want to dance
good and evil match perfect it's a great romance
[harmonizing the antagonism between spirit and body to form a soulish way out of here beyond the false and lowly black and white picture of us]
I can deal with some psychic pain
[the soul in between spirit and body, the pain when it is passing beyond being mere 'psychicoi'...which is Greek for 'psychic houses' as Paul calls those who don't initiate themselves. Those who fail in this are reabsorbed at death because the psychic or moon body did not become self-conscious enough in this life to escape it's fetch daemon it is a facet of at it's lower stage and so is an empty house returning to it's skyscraper it was pulled out from so to speak.]
if it'll slow down my higher brain
[Freud, the great rapist of Shamanist psychology, refers to this as the 'Super Ego' and damn...Elliott had the strongest 'Super Ego' urging him that I've ever known of in this life of mine. Higher Intellectual Center can work through our imagination when imagination's a cleansed doorway but Higher Intellectual is not 'an invention of our imagination' as the great super idiot Freud claims. if anything the imagination is an in-vention of it. It is a property of Spirit: "here I lay dreaming of the brilliant sun, raining it's guiding light on everyone. for a moments rest you can lean against the bannister, after running upstairs again and again from wherever they tried to fix you in but always fair cities finest follow right behind (singing sarcastically to such as you like Freud) 'you've got a pretty vision in your head, a pencil full of poision lead'....but you: 'fucking ought to stay away from things you know nothing about' ...my sister helped him title this song by the way: everybody cares, everybody understands.]
things full of/fall in disappearing ink
[the experiences of Spirit are timeless compared to the soul...so...disappearing always from our even more fleeting temporal minds shifting memory here (far below the experiences even of soul) and almost animal like completely]
vomitting in a kitchen sink
[self-vomitting: re-occuring ones Spirit (the disappearing ink) down into the kitchen sink or 'soul' here. Such is the upper work]
disconnecting from the missing link
[walking the dog, gaining mastery over ones physical body as a puppet extension of one's awakened soul. Such is the lower work. The rest is self explanatory...avoiding the cold comfort of the in-between.]
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
it's not what I'd like
it's just a fond a farewell to a friend
I couldn't get things right:
a fond farewell to a friend
I've seen you leaving me (honestly you're leaving me)
taken up with the enemy
the cold comfort of the in-between
a little less then a human being
a little less then a happy hide/high/height
a little less then a suicide
the only things that you really tried...
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend
it's not what I like
it's just a fond a farewell to a friend
who couldn't get things right:
fond farewell to the Friend
this is not my life
it's just a fond farewell to a friend