Lyrics for Two as interpreted by Freddox

Two Lyrics
In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up,
when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough."

He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted),
and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:
That there was nothing that I could do to save you,
the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you.
Something in my throat made my next words shake,
and something in the wires made the lightbulbs break.
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling,
it opened up the scars that had just finished healing.
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur,
(I thougth that it was beautiful, it made me a believer.)
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room,
but I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew.
When I reappered and tried to give you something for the pain,
you came to hating me again and just sang your refreain:

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair,
then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears in your head,
now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating.

Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy,
wearing silver rings with nobody clapping.
When we moved here togehter we were so dissappointed,
sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed.
It killed me to see you getting always rejected,
but I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected.
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes,
I just held you in the doorframe through all of the earthquakes.
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night,
and I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight.)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you from stomping out that door,
coming back like you always do. Well no one's gonna fix it for us, no one can.
You say that, 'No one's gonna listen, and no one understands.'

So there's no open doors and there's no way to get through,
there's no other witnesses, just us two.

There's two people living in one small room,
from your two half-families tearing at you,
two ways to tell the story (no one worries),
two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry,
two people talking inside your brain,
two people believing that I'm the one to blame,
two different voices coming out of your mouth,
while I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout.

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair,
then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Daddy was an asshole, he fucked you up, built the gears in your head,
now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating.

Interaction
Mail to a friend Send Lyrics to a Friend
Share on Facebook

Stumble It
Add to Del.icio.us Add to Del.icio.us




  • 21 Comments
  • Printer Friendly Lyrics
animalcollector
04-12-2009

Rated +1 
Beautiful, such an amazing album. The lyrics in this are fantastic.

Log in to reply
Takun
05-01-2009

Rated 0 
The Antlers are amazing, simply put. Such a well written song.

Log in to reply
wyliekyle
06-16-2009

Rated 0 
I have a feeling this is about bi-polar disease or schizophrenia.

Two being the two personalities.

Log in to reply
RLHJones
06-20-2009

Rated 0 
It would be 'split/multiple personality disorder', rather than 'bi-polar disorder' which is to do with mood extremes or 'schizophrenia' which is to do with delusion, often relating to hearing voices such as god and the devil. Just to clear that common misconception up :D

Log in to reply
1 Reply
gilbag
07-11-2009

Rated 0 
So beautiful and so fucked up. To look on someone you care about so much and know you can't fix or help.

Log in to reply
1 Reply
wyliekyle
07-13-2009

Rated 0 
(In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up,
when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough.")

-This distinguishes that the author isn't the patient. If you are sleeping sitting up in the hospital than you are in the waiting room or in a chair in a patients room.

It could be noted that there could be some anorexia ties here and there. Maybe depression in general.



Log in to reply
1 Reply
tanderson1812
07-15-2009

Rated 0 
RLH Jones,
It's also not multiple personality disorder, it's Dissociative Identity Disorder. And Bipolar disorder does have two 'polarized' personalities; one manic, and one depressive. Also, schizophrenia is often a predecessor to DID. If you feel you must correct someone, at least know your facts. Wyliekyle made an interesting point. The song is obviously about loving someone with frequent mood-swings, and the very name "Two" I think is in reference to 'BI'polar.

e.g.

It killed me to see you getting always rejected,
but I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected.
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes,
I just held you in the doorframe through all of the earthquakes.
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night,
and I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight.)
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you from stomping out that door,
coming back like you always do.

Log in to reply
RLHJones
08-03-2009

Rated 0 
Cool well, correct me if I'm wrong, but DID is the same as MPD, no?
As per the ICD-10.
I can't see many references which would point to mania or depression as a separate issue, only those which would comply with our DID/MPD theory.

There's two people living in one small room,
...
two people talking inside your brain,
two people believing that I'm the one to blame,
two different voices coming out of your mouth..

Beautiful song whatever the meaning.

Log in to reply
wideeyedandy
08-17-2009

Rated 0 
The girl has Borderline Personality Disorder as well as an eating disorder.
Her past clearly affect her life now. With BPD, most of the emotional wounds from childhood appear in adult years.
There is love, but everything is such a mess.



Log in to reply
PhilosophLogic
08-26-2009

Rated 0 
I looked at it a little differently. I see the eating disorder obviously, but with the lines "from your two half-families tearing at you" and "two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry", i get the feeling that they were married, the two silver rings being engagement and wedding ring. And the two half families would be hers and his. The two voices in your head doesn't mean you have split personalities, or the two voices. It could just be with all these outside influences with her father and the family drama, that she is fighting with herself as to what is the right choice, to leave him or not. I think after all of this... she went crazy, which leads to what happens in the beginning of the song.

Log in to reply
Joshua27
08-27-2009

Rated 0 
Just to stop anyone else from sounding pompous and pretentions and FALSE by saying the song is obviously about an eating disorder or a mental disorder I will mention now that the entire album is the story of the songwriter watching his wife die of bone cancer.
the weight loss, the 'childhood dreams', even the psychological breaking down are all.... well, you get the point.

Log in to reply
thisisirrelevant
09-07-2009

Rated 0 
this song really strikes a chord with me because of this line: "And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. "Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating. "
it's strange because i used to be an anorexic (i've recovered now, but there is no such thing as a full recovery with me....) and 87 pounds was my goal weight....


Log in to reply
jc4jcjcjc20jc
09-09-2009

Rated 0 
Its about, as it seems to me anyway, a girls two families (divorce and remarriage) are trying to tear her away from her husband (recently married probably still very young) because they think hes the one causing her all the problems. When in actuality it was her father and they didn't believe her. She probably became anorexic because of it buy they didn't notice. All this has caused her to become depressed and she now takes it out on the guy she really loves. And i think the part where shes dieing and he doesn't wanna believe it is actually a metaphor for how he loves her to much to give up on her even though shes become an ugly person towards him.

Log in to reply
EmilyApple
09-09-2009

Rated +1 
Joshua 27 is right. "Hopsice" is a concept album about a man who works at a hospital, falls in love with a cancer patient, marries her, and then watches her die. I think the psychological and physical breakdowns described in this song are all a result of the cancer. If you ask me, the entire album is genius.

What I love about this song (and the whole album, for that matter) is how it differs from traditional cancer stories. I've heard so many cancer stories that drip of sadness but in the end they all arrive at something positive: "I found the meaning of life," "I discovered what's really important," "My wife died but she was the love of my life and I was blessed to have the time with her I did," "I'm at peace about what happened," etc. But in this story the overwhelming emotion isn't sadness, it's anger. The cancer patient throws phones at her husband, blames him for her mistakes, and daily threatens to leave him. And the narrator doesn't romanticize his relationship with his wife; he actually lets us in on its dysfunction and admits that they were married hastily and at the disapproval of their friends. There's no redemption in this story at all, and that's what makes it so powerful. I love it!

Log in to reply
4 Replies
EmilyApple
09-09-2009

Rated +1 
Also, there's a prologue printed in the album's liner notes that might be helpful. I'll reprint it here:



Before diving into this, I think some background would be useful. When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve-year interim. When she fell crossing that street (south of Houston, old Manhattan-land), those nightmares fell from building tops and took her by the hand.

She was brought into those rooms with sliding curtains and shining children's heads. One of the, that boy, was not as lucky as she then. (Years later, he would return to her at night, just when she thought she might have fallen asleep. As she would later describe to me, his face would be up against hers, and she'd be too terrified to speak.)

Now, I won't pretend I understand, because I can't, and now I never will. But something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove...well, my point in all of this is that it's all connected in these complicated nightmares that we wove.

Log in to reply
atarilover123
09-15-2009

Rated 0 
i'm thinking that this song is called two because its two in the morning the first lines are:

"In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up,
when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough."

there are definitetly two defined characters in the song making me inclined to think that schizophrenia isn't involved, the characters are obviously very closely linked though, perhaps married:
"tell me when you think that we became so unhappy, wearing silver rings with nobody clapping."
i think that the husband finally realises that his clinging to hope that his wife might survive is actually causing her pain and to be most kind he's got to let her go
"a doctor came to tell me, enough is enough"
all the references to two voices etc i think are there last moments together

anyway what do i know, its an amazing, beautiful song



Log in to reply
zcatya
09-20-2009

Rated 0 
This is one of the saddest goddamn songs i've ever heard :(

Log in to reply
ncg51089
09-27-2009

Rated 0 
The second line is not "enough is enough," but rather, "nothing's enough." This follows from kettering, when the doctors said that "there was no saving you"

Log in to reply
1 Reply
tackledspoon
10-06-2009

Rated +1 
Guys, I think this is a Waaves cover, guys.

Log in to reply
1 Reply
seitgeist
10-11-2009

Rated 0 
I always thought the whole albumwas about someone dying of cancer and it is being told in the perspective of his or her friend...

Anyway, really beautiful song and a great album.

Log in to reply
slopp
10-12-2009

Rated 0 
Actually it's not about an eating disorder. It's about a relationship between a young man and a woman. The woman gets cancer and it brings them closer, making them realise (after ages of fighting) how much they love each other. I know this because the whole album is about this womans struggle with cancer and her husband. Some songs, like Bear, talk about disputes between them (it's about a baby they had that eventually tore them further apart)while others talk about the moments in the hospital. I don't know about the MPD thing.

Log in to reply
2 Replies




  • Add Your Comments
What does this song mean to you?

You must be logged in to post your comments.

Feel free to create an account with us, or log in with your existing account, to start adding your comments to songs.





Popular
Top:   Lyrics, Artists, Albums
Random:   Lyric, Artist, Album

Your Ad Here