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You've been living a while in the front of my skull, making orders
You've been writing me rules, shrinking maps and redrawing borders
I've been repeating your speeches, but the audience just doesn't follow
Because I'm leaving out words, punctuations, and it sounds pretty hollow
I've been living in bed because now you tell me to sleep
I've been hiding my voice and my face and you decide when I eat
In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around
While you're awake I'm impossible, constantly letting you down
Little porcelain figurines, glass bullets you shoot at the wall
Threats of castration for crimes you imagine when I miss your call
With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger, I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer
I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself
"Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this
She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness
I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her
No one's going to come as long as I lay still in bed beside her"
You've been writing me rules, shrinking maps and redrawing borders
I've been repeating your speeches, but the audience just doesn't follow
Because I'm leaving out words, punctuations, and it sounds pretty hollow
I've been living in bed because now you tell me to sleep
I've been hiding my voice and my face and you decide when I eat
In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around
While you're awake I'm impossible, constantly letting you down
Little porcelain figurines, glass bullets you shoot at the wall
Threats of castration for crimes you imagine when I miss your call
With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger, I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer
I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself
"Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this
She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness
I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her
No one's going to come as long as I lay still in bed beside her"
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"I've been repeating your speeches, but the audience just doesn't follow
Because I'm leaving out words, punctuations, and it sounds pretty hollow"
Is another reference to her control over him. The narrator is telling friends and family the things she says to him to manipulate him,
Apologising after an abusive moment for example, he is explaining why he doesn't just leave. Clearly still in love he believes that it is his inability to tell her side of the story than her who is at fault.
This seems to fit with Silberman's own interpretation of the album which is the narrator's escape from an abusive relationship as much as a story of a cancer patient.
This is a particularly powerful song on the album.
"I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her"
One is how the wife is paranoid that her husband, the singer, is cheating on her. The singer loves her and is truly not, but his wife cannot overcome her paranoia.
"Because I'm leaving out words, punctuations, and it sounds pretty hollow"
This is explaining how he does not know how to convince her.
"You've been writing me rules, shrinking maps and redrawing borders"
This explains how she is controlling and abusive amid her paranoia.
"I've been repeating your speeches, but the audience just doesn't follow"
This could mean many things. It could mean that the singer is getting mad at her because she "does not follow", or isn't believing him. "Repeating your speeches" I am ambiguous towards. I think it means he is putting things on her, becoming fed up with her reluctance.
"You've been living a while in the front of my skull, making orders"
This could be taken literally, or figuratively. Literally would mean complying with the story, that she is sick and in a hospital bed, with him sitting next to it. Or it could be taken figuratively, in that she is constantly in his face "making orders" because she is so controlling.
"I've been living in bed because now you tell me to sleep
I've been hiding my voice and my face and you decide when I eat"
Controlling, again. He's afraid to say anything in fear he will fuck something up.
"In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around
While you're awake I'm impossible, constantly letting you down"
This just reinforces the idea that she's paranoid and thinks he is a liar and a cheater.
"Little porcelain figurines, glass bullets you shoot at the wall
Threats of castration for crimes you imagine when I miss your call"
Again, she thinks he's cheating on her.
"With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger, I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer"
"The bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger" I'm not sure about. Maybe it's conveying an image of him biting his finger (because some people do that when they cry), and him acknowledging the ring means they are married. "I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer" means that she is sick, and he will stay with her until she dies.
"I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself"
He still loves her, even with all that is going on. He doesn't want her to die.
"'Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this
She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness
I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her
No one's going to come as long as I lay still in bed beside her'"
He is crying out for help. She is dying and he has to watch her. Him saying he's "infected" could mean that he is depressed because of it, and he's freaking out, basically ("rigid in that room inside her"). He is saying that nobody will come help, because nobody can help. She is going to die, and all he can do is lay in bed beside her.
Truly a beautiful song. Holy shit.
The caretaker that is in love with the dying is showing his depression:
Because I'm leaving out words, punctuations, and it sounds pretty hollow- Feels helpless
I've been living in bed because now you tell me to sleep - Sleeping to much b/c of the depression
I've been hiding my voice and my face and you decide when I eat - Keeping himself consolidated from everyone else, his eating habits are destroyed.
In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around. When you're awake I'm impossible constantly letting you down- Feelings of helplessness
I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself- Wishes the roles were reversed, wishes he was dead.
Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this
She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness
I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her - Is helpless
The song is about the depression stage of the hospice caretaker(helplessness, sleep disorder, eating disorder, suicidal thoughts-would feel better if he was dead)
"You've been writing me rules, shrinking maps and redrawing borders."
"I've been hiding my voice and my face and you decide when I eat."
"Threats of castration for crimes you imagine when I miss your call."
This sounds like a disastrous relationship, one I feel like I was in before. I don't think this has anything to do with any kind of doctor/patient relationship, it seems many people look way too much into the lyrics on songmeanings.net. I think it's clearly about a relationship.
"In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around. When you're awake I'm impossible constantly letting you down."
I felt those exact words in my last relationship.
throughout the entire album he alludes to her haunting him, and it reminds me of edgar allan poe. i think he was dark to begin with but watching someone so fragile die from something he couldn't protect her from made him want to die with her.
my favorite line is "i'd happily take all of those bullets inside of you and put them inside of myself"
"With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger,
I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer.
I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself."
It seems like this is from the perspective of a loved one of the patient who may in fact be their care-taker in the hospital as well. Foreshadowing not only the fact that that they will be there by their side in the hospital as long as it takes for them to pass on, but also that they will be the one to recount the life of the soon-to-be-deceased is quite a disturbing thought. You can really envision their thought process and the site of this inner-dialogue.
And he met her in the hospital, where he was her caretaker (not sure if it was as an orderly, a nurse or even a doctor.)
He is a caretaker in a Hospice, she is a bipolar late stage bone cancer patient with little hope for survival who can not get a bone marrow transplant due to past suicide attempts. It is really all there, fantastic in its subtlety. This song is just a part of it.