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A boy on a train with a birthmark on his forehead
Listening to language tapes and all he hear is birds
Everyone laughs cause he brings his own chair to the office
Convinced that the cushions will give him steadier thoughts
The muscles of the intellectuals are atrophying
Nobody’s running, nobody’s hiding
They’re lit by a light that isn’t even the sun
Lit by a light that isn’t even the moon
Ave maria…
Now how many times have i told you not to go there?
How many times have i begged you not to go?
And how many times have you snuck down to that cellar
Just to watch how the roots begin to grow straight up through our floor?
Listening to language tapes and all he hear is birds
Everyone laughs cause he brings his own chair to the office
Convinced that the cushions will give him steadier thoughts
The muscles of the intellectuals are atrophying
Nobody’s running, nobody’s hiding
They’re lit by a light that isn’t even the sun
Lit by a light that isn’t even the moon
Ave maria…
Now how many times have i told you not to go there?
How many times have i begged you not to go?
And how many times have you snuck down to that cellar
Just to watch how the roots begin to grow straight up through our floor?
Lyrics submitted by lemonjelly
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heh i got a birthmark on my forehead. it sucked so bad growing up in the 80's. i can't count the number of times i hear "Gorbachev"
anyways love the song and her voice. ne me quitte pas was the first song i heard from her years ago and have loved her since.
@SpeKtorGasm thanks for that info. i like the insight
she feels the intellectual mind goes into atrophy when it stops running or hiding from its darker or deeper/unconscious roots [the cellar].
they begin to light up from somewhere else from something that has no material source [neither the sun or moon]
reminds me very much of the d.h lawrence quote 'I conceive a man's body as a kind of flame forever upright and yet flowing, and the intellect is just the light that is shed into the things around us. And I am not so much concerned with things around, which is really mind, but with the mystery of the flame forever flowing…. and being itself.'
defnately a similar theme,I enjoy her riddles,she speaks my language.
Shot in the dark here but in 2006 a writer/director/poet/statesmen by the name of Lennart Meri (Hail Meri?) died of a brain tumor (birth mark on his head?). President of Estonia from 1992-2001. Estonia declared their independence from the USSR in 1991 after the "Singing Revolution". The "birth mark" could also just be a reference to Mikhail Gorbachev who of course was in power when Meri was an activist opposed to Soviet rule. When Meri was 12 years old the Soviets deported he and his family to Siberia (perhaps on a train) after "incorporating" Estonia. While in exile he became interested in the languages of the other exiles eventually learning to speak 4 or 5 languages. Hardly "language tapes" but "all he heard was birds", could be a reference to his desire for freedom. Meri is acclaimed for his works for human rights and certainly shared Regina's love of classic literature and the arts. Google this guy, Regina would have appreciated him.
Of course if Regina wrote this before 2006 my theory is shot... Hail Meri in any event.
Since I'm posting, I found a Regina quote relevant to all her ambiguous songs.
This is from a NPR interview in June 09-
"I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful — there's no one that has all the answers." - Regina Spektor
"The muscles of the intellectuals are atrophying" ... We might think that we have a broad understanding of the world, but we are really just prisoners in a cave, only seeing shadows of reality.
"Nobody's running, nobody's hiding" ... They are chained inside of the cave. They think what they see is reality, so they are conent... they don't try to escape their shackles.
"Lit by a light that isn't even the sun, lit by a light that isn't even the moon" ... They are watching shadows on the wall of the cave, projected by a huge fire.