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Stand up straight at the foot of your love
I lift my shirt up
Stand up straight at the foot of your love
I lift my shirt up
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
Lay my head on the hood of your car
I'll take it too far
Lay my head on the hood of your car
I'll take it too far
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about ? everybody I know
I'll rest my eyes till the fevers outta me
I'll rest my eyes to the rivers in the sea
I'll rest my eyes till the fevers outta me
I'll rest my eyes to the rivers in the sea
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
I'm on a blood buzz
Yes I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I'm on a blood buzz
God I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
I'm on a blood buzz
Yes I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I'm on a blood buzz
God I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I lift my shirt up
Stand up straight at the foot of your love
I lift my shirt up
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
Lay my head on the hood of your car
I'll take it too far
Lay my head on the hood of your car
I'll take it too far
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about ? everybody I know
I'll rest my eyes till the fevers outta me
I'll rest my eyes to the rivers in the sea
I'll rest my eyes till the fevers outta me
I'll rest my eyes to the rivers in the sea
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
I'm on a blood buzz
Yes I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I'm on a blood buzz
God I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I'll never marry but Ohio don't remember me
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
I'm on a blood buzz
Yes I am
I'm on a blood buzz
I'm on a blood buzz
God I am
I'm on a blood buzz
Lyrics submitted by brainybrainybrainy, edited by Mellow_Harsher, ryank96
Track duration: 04:36
"Bloodbuzz Ohio" as written by Padma Newsome Matthew D. Berninger
Lyrics © BUG MUSIC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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When the debut came out, these guys were all in their late twenties, relatively new to Brooklyn, and just beginning to understand what it means to live in the 'adult' world. In "Theory of the Crows" the grievances were fresh, even if the narrator already sounded tired with it all.
In "Bloodbuzz Ohio" - and 'High Violet' in general - it's been nearly a decade since the debut. The narrator now has a family, kids, and many more years on his life. The novelty of starting a band and moving to Brooklyn has faded. He's now reflecting on home - Ohio (Cincinnati) - where it all started. Everything has changed since he left, and he has seen what's become of 'everybody he knows' and he understands because he's lived it. There's a definitely a "You Can't Go Home Again" sentiment going on throughout, as home is not what it used to be and neither are you.
Part of what makes the National great is their ability to universalize the personal experience of getting older, and this song is one of the very best examples of this. When he sings of owing "money, to the money, to the money I know", we can all identify: student loans, car payments, mortgages, interest on top of interest - it's all too real and all too familiar.
Clearly the ghosts of "Theory of the Crows" still linger, as the responsibilities of adulthood have not escaped him, and it doesn't appear as they ever will.
1. I lift my shirt up (to inject)
2. Bloodbuzz \ swarm of bees (heroin is different to other drugs as it is injected into the blood and the user is very aware of this)
These are very specific references.
Why drug addiction?
1. Stand up straight at the foot of your love (the drug is bigger than him even when he tries his best to confront it i.e. stand up straight)
2. Lay my head on the hood of your car. I'll take it too far (he voluntarily sacrifices his life in that he knows using will kill him but also knows that he cannot stop)
3. falling out from everybody I know (heroin addicts will borrow or steal from, and therefore fall out with, all friends and family.)
4. I still owe money... (generally only heroin addicts borrow money from everyone)
In the interview he talks about drinking wine but it would be very risky to specifically say its heroin.
I love the honesty and sincerity of this song and the whole album. I worry it might glorify heroin use but hopefully the slavery and total loss outweighs the gironimoooooooooooooooooo aspect.
I think the lines "I still owe money to the money to the money I owe" symbolizes the labyrinthine debt adulthood comes with. He no longer even understands where his money is going. This isn't meant to be a potent analysis of his current economic status, but more a contrasting image to the ones of home and love. The following line-- "The floors are falling out from everybody I know..."-- just adds to that sentiment, and makes me think about how all of his friends have made bad choices, or can't support themselves. I think he is at a point in his life where he is reflecting on his bad decisions.
Being carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees feels to me like a mixed image. On the one hand, he is being carried home, and the thought of flight and being carried in flight is a comforting thought in a way. But in a swarm of bees means chaos and relentless pain. It is a difficult journey. But the image also has that dreamlike quality to it that again, enhances the sense of nostalgia.
"I never married" sounds like regret for forgetting to grow with someone. I don't think it is necessarily someone in particular, especially since Matt Beringer IS married, and quite happily from the way he sings about her. So the line isn't literal, I think it indicates he chose an alternate course for growing old-- one that is the opposite of the way people from his hometown in Ohio chose.
"I never thought about love when I thought about home" is again, to me, more expressionist than logical or direct. To me, it is all more about the associative feelings with those words, and they all elicit a feeling of nostalgia for me.
Perhaps I'm wrong in all of this. But this song found me when I was going through the same period in my life, where I felt directionless and felt my friends were directionless, and home as an idea is comforting, but in reality, I've been away for so long that any trip home feels cold and foreign (I'm from Alabama). Not necessarily depressing as much as a sober reflection on life and getting older, losing that feeling of adventure and idealism that takes one away from home in the first place. Debt and lost loves, bad decisions and feeling alone. All of this song hit hard, and two years later I still find it is one of my favorites.
I lift my shirt up ( I expose myself for what and who I am)
Stand up straight at the foot of your love
I lift my shirt up
I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees (I am taken back to where he left off with a person. Ohio is a metaphor for home base or to where he left off with that person he is seeking reconciliation with. A swarm of bees carries him with a rhythmic hymn but one wrong move and the bees will devour him. He is given a second chance to explain himself but one false move and the "bees" will not let him fulfill his task. He is not getting a free ride.)
I never married but Ohio don't remember me ( he never moved on. Marriage personifies you making a new life but he explains he never did so he never moved on. But "Ohio" the person he left behind doesn't remember who he really is deep down inside.)
Lay my head on the hood of your car (He is putting himself at the mercy of that person he owes an explanation to and seeking forgiveness from)
I take it too far (He is pushing the issue too much)
Lay my head on the hood of your car
I take it too far
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe (He owes an explanation to that person for the reason why he wronged them)
I never thought about love when I thought about home (He separated emotion from his goal of coming clean with that person)
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know
what's wrong with cinema?
rarely does it happen here on this forum.
"stand up straight at the foot of your love..." that's an imperative. foot-locker for inspection!
and a response "i lift my shirt up..." [take your pick - imangined/remembered scars, delights, initiations, ones about to be inflicted at the gesture of memory]
any way...this is an inspection
(perhaps, on a very different reading...as one feels at sea, non-ohian, and about to be naked, bared assed with another, they say, or it's heard ---- "stand up straight at the foot of your love" - declare yourself - and the declaration is this song...)
dude is about to get some - and he was carried to ohio in a swarm of bees.. what's simpler than that?
off goes his memory. off goes his petit mort and his everything that lead him to this moment, after all, it's called little death for a reason... his life flashes before his eyes...
he hopes for the best... Ohio doesn't remember him.
he's got to make it all up himself.
how might that work out in a tortured soul? let's listen...
"lay my head on the hood of your car/... i take it too far."
that's a present tense descriptive... BUSTED or dogged...when else do you have your head on the hood of a car? from inspection to arrest...
she or he's (mentally) busted. flashing sirens and all! handcuffed, no doubt, needs the cop to be his cousin and smash his face against the hood a little to make a point... or, maybe, just love him a little...
these are images. and good ones.
this swarm of bees is police sirens. that's the urgency, the one long emergency, of this dude's nostalgia! (note this song is a a re-write of springsteen)he's dumped, after all this, at the state line.
he's not a federal case around marriage and kidnapping etc etc etc, but,
Ohio has no concern for his stupid tall tale...
... the ambivalence is everything!
Ohio says "Get lost", but that's his home... he's taken aback, surely his home would welcome him?
where to now?! tally-ho?!?!?! Westwawrd -Ho?!?!!? it's too late. we live in a different generation.
only nostalgia, only a bloodbuzz to even begin to bother with. so there you sit in NYC with a blood buzz... image after image of your confession to your mother town... it holds indifference and contempt even as you tried, once, honesetly, to remember it, and you too dismissed your town with indifference.
ambivalence.
it smashed your face after getting you to lift your shirt.
oh i almost forgot...the bees... they are royalty, they are workers; they are Malebranche's, they are Bacon's; they are the history you can never live up to; they are simply that fear of allergies so ubiquitous in the 70s.80s. 90s.
all gone by an epi-pen's puncture.... this song is not about epi-pens.
Laying his head on the hood of the car, is when he overdoses (takes it too far).
The money he owes is to his dealers. He never thought about love when he thought about “home” – home is being high. The floors fall in on him every time he injects – it is his illusion.
Ohio – Hmm.. Do you think Ohio is a metaphor for getting HIGH? The place he goes when he is high? Ohio literally won’t remember him, because he was he was never there – it’s a metaphor, not a literal place.
Going to the concert tonight at the Beacon Theatre in NY. Can't wait!
Sorry beliababy... i couldnt work out how to delete the duplicates. On my way now!
Love you FatGurl!
ASweetPea - You "no longer enjoy speaking with" me? You did before? Love you too honey! *in control again.... YES!*
Laying his head on the hood of the car, is when he overdoses (takes it too far).
The money he owes is to his dealers. He never thought about love when he thought about “home” – home is being high. The floors fall in on him every time he injects – it is his illusion.
Ohio – Hmm.. Do you think Ohio is a metaphor for getting HIGH? The place he goes when he is high? Ohio literally won’t remember him, because he was he was never there – it’s a metaphor, not a literal place.
Going to the concert tonight at the Beacon Theatre in NY. Can't wait.