its amazing how far music can come.. 24 years after it released and its one of the most heartfelt songs ive heard
I remember a girl so very well
The carnival drums all mad in the air
Grim reapers and skeletons and a missionary bell
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
In a colonial hotel we fucked up the sun
And then we fucked it down again
Well the sun comes up and the sun goes down
Going round and round to nowhere
The kitten that padded and purred on my lap
Now swipes at my face with the paw of a bear
I turn the other cheek and you lay into that
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Across clinical benches with nothing to talk
Breathing tea and biscuits and the Serenity Prayer
While the bones of our child crumble like chalk
O where do we go now but nowhere
I remember a girl so bold and so bright
Loose-limbed and laughing and brazen and bare
Sits gnawing her knuckles in the chemical light
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
You come for me now with a cake that you've made
Ravaged avenger with a clip in your hair
Full of glass and bleach and my old razorblades
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover make up
If they'd give me my clothes back then I could go home
From this fresh, this clean, antiseptic air
Behind the locked gates an old donkey moans
Where do we go now but nowhere
Around the duck pond we grimly mope
Gloomily and mournfully we go round again
And one more doomed time and without much hope
Going round and around to nowhere
From the balcony we watched the carnival band
The crack of the drum, a little child did scare
I can still feel his fingers pressed in my hand
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
If I could relive one day of my life
If I could relive just a single one
You on the balcony, my future wife
Oh who could have known, but no one
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
The carnival drums all mad in the air
Grim reapers and skeletons and a missionary bell
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
In a colonial hotel we fucked up the sun
And then we fucked it down again
Well the sun comes up and the sun goes down
Going round and round to nowhere
The kitten that padded and purred on my lap
Now swipes at my face with the paw of a bear
I turn the other cheek and you lay into that
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Across clinical benches with nothing to talk
Breathing tea and biscuits and the Serenity Prayer
While the bones of our child crumble like chalk
O where do we go now but nowhere
I remember a girl so bold and so bright
Loose-limbed and laughing and brazen and bare
Sits gnawing her knuckles in the chemical light
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
You come for me now with a cake that you've made
Ravaged avenger with a clip in your hair
Full of glass and bleach and my old razorblades
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover make up
If they'd give me my clothes back then I could go home
From this fresh, this clean, antiseptic air
Behind the locked gates an old donkey moans
Where do we go now but nowhere
Around the duck pond we grimly mope
Gloomily and mournfully we go round again
And one more doomed time and without much hope
Going round and around to nowhere
From the balcony we watched the carnival band
The crack of the drum, a little child did scare
I can still feel his fingers pressed in my hand
Oh where do we go now but nowhere
If I could relive one day of my life
If I could relive just a single one
You on the balcony, my future wife
Oh who could have known, but no one
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Oh wake up, my love, my lover wake up
Lyrics submitted by stanlavisbad2, edited by Mellow_Harsher
Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere? Lyrics as written by Nicholas Cave
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Considering that this album is probably one of Cave's most personal ones, I'd go for the rehab interpretation. I honestly don't know who the girl in question is though.
She was probably helping him through his addiction problems, visiting him from time to time (see "clinical benches" where patients and visitors hang out) being some sort of hope (carrying the "missionary bell") among all the grimy imaginery of death that surrounded him at the moment ("grim reapers and skeletons").
My thought is that she probably got tired of the situation, got angry at him because of his difficulties trying to detox, so the one who was meant to soothe him turned against him: "The kitten that padded and purred on my lap Now swipes at my face with the paw of a bear" and he couldn't react at all because he knew it was his fault after all "I turn the other cheek and you lay into that."
Images like the ones of the colonial hotel are probably just memories from a past that seemed promising for both of them, maybe at the peak of their love, when they dreamed of having a baby; the hope of the baby dies when their relationship starts to fall apart because of the addiction, and they become progressively consumed by it, that's why while they "have nothing to talk" about, " the bones of our child crumble like chalk", in a metaphorical way, like a dream that vanishes.
In my head, when he sings: "If I could relive one day of my life If I could relive just a single one You on the balcony, my future wife O who could have known, but no one"
he's remembering the day the girl visited him to the clinic for the last time. Or maybe the old times at the "colonial" hotels, when they were happy and in love and he dreamed to marry her.
Maybe I got it all wrong. But I had to say something, I love the song.