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You see, I'm all grown-up now
He said
"Just put your feet down child
'Cause you're all grown-up now."
Just like a photograph I pick you up
Just like a station on the radio
I pick you up
Just like a face in the crowd
I pick you up
Just like a feeling that you're sending out
I pick it up
But I can't let you go
If I let you go
You slip into the fog
This love was big enough for the both of us.
This love of yours,
Was big enough to be frightened of
It's deep and dark like the water was
The day I learned to swim.
He said "Just put your feet down child
Just put your feet down child
The water is only waist high
I'll let go of you gently
Then you can swim to me."
Is this love big enough to watch over me
Big enough to let go of me?
Without hurting me
Like the day I learned to swim.
"'Cause you're all grown-up now
Just put your feet down child
The water is only waist high.
I'll let go of you gently
Then you can swim to me."
He said
"Just put your feet down child
'Cause you're all grown-up now."
Just like a photograph I pick you up
Just like a station on the radio
I pick you up
Just like a face in the crowd
I pick you up
Just like a feeling that you're sending out
I pick it up
But I can't let you go
If I let you go
You slip into the fog
This love was big enough for the both of us.
This love of yours,
Was big enough to be frightened of
It's deep and dark like the water was
The day I learned to swim.
He said "Just put your feet down child
Just put your feet down child
The water is only waist high
I'll let go of you gently
Then you can swim to me."
Is this love big enough to watch over me
Big enough to let go of me?
Without hurting me
Like the day I learned to swim.
"'Cause you're all grown-up now
Just put your feet down child
The water is only waist high.
I'll let go of you gently
Then you can swim to me."
Lyrics submitted by weezerific:cutlery
Track duration: 02:37
"The Fog" as written by Kate / Bush
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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REACHING OUT celebrates the blind marvel of everything... The Big Bang... The Creation of Adam... Life, the Universe, the Human Condition... and maybe the filial-parental triangle, with its sad, inevitable pattern of discipline, needy clinging and breaking away...
Maybe a song about trauma-recovery. Trauma can 'burn the library' - destroy confidence and knowledge skills. Imagine 'surviving' an underground bomb attack, and then being hounded by panic attacks when taking the subway. Trauma can cause psychological regression. The adult becomes the night-frightened child... 'After an initial deep split the tremors can go on indefinitely...'
The opening lines recall the child's thrilling wave of transition... A 'remembrance of things past' ... Learning to swim as a rite of passage into adulthood... The world promises reassurance and excitement...
But the post-traumatised (post-Ninth Wave) adult feels vague, distant, detached, cast out, "uncanny" (à la Freud)... the world is familiar yet foreign... cognitive shock, panic, fear of the (un)familiar, a bad trip... "I can't let you go..." ... The Fog is threatening, dangerous, disarming... And trauma can shroud 'the everyday' in fog... a fog that envelopes perceptions, distorts reality, and alienates one from oneself and others...
Emotional trauma can shatter/expand one's sense of self... Grief reveals just how necessary a relationship is or had become; how deep, dark and vast it had (always) been... We can 'see' the drowning-potential of water but not always of relationships... When one embarks on a relationship, one doesn't necessarily perceive its dangerous essentiality... Like going for a swim and suddenly finding yourself uncomfortably far out...
Alone, and Not waving But drowning...
Maybe the song is about pre-Wedding Day Anxiety; about the father 'giving away' the bride... Maybe the song captures the scary realisation that a relationship risks becoming a vital organ to a (dys?)functioning self... She feels scared of the deep commitment... Her fears of drowning (in the relationship) are surfacing...
The big parental dynamic 'defined' her ego security, art, sense of self, etc. And now she fears ego-compromise or creative-castration (à la Plath?)... She must reassure herself, teach and remind herself that she has learned to swim (to and/or away)... Maybe she can let herself go and trust them entirely as she did her father... Or maybe the relationship is becoming too complicated and scary... Flight and Fright!
Foggy conditions are frightening. Though the song, The Fog, is full of paternal comfort and reassurance, somehow it still reminds me of Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest... "Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That's what McMurphy can't understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we'd be easy to get at."