Having loved this song repeatedly and thoroughly but never understood it, I was gratified to read about the murder meaning, as horrified as I was by the stories of those murdered women. Finally this song comes clear to me. However: "Callous heels, numbed in travel, endless maps made by the scalpels" has been a line that I sung throatily along with, feeling like it meant:
I've got a lot of miles on me, and my heels are numbed and calloused because of this. Contact with others has left me traced with "maps" of lines carved by their "scalpels"- hands, words, bodies, actions. Learning about the women makes me think that the anguish in those verses is theirs, the callous heels are theirs, numbed with travel to the shitty jobs and wherever else they had to go in their lives, and the maps were carved by the bastards that hurt those women with God only knows what kind of weapons (scalpels). I hope this makes sense to somebody. Thanks for reading.
Having loved this song repeatedly and thoroughly but never understood it, I was gratified to read about the murder meaning, as horrified as I was by the stories of those murdered women. Finally this song comes clear to me. However: "Callous heels, numbed in travel, endless maps made by the scalpels" has been a line that I sung throatily along with, feeling like it meant: I've got a lot of miles on me, and my heels are numbed and calloused because of this. Contact with others has left me traced with "maps" of lines carved by their "scalpels"- hands, words, bodies, actions. Learning about the women makes me think that the anguish in those verses is theirs, the callous heels are theirs, numbed with travel to the shitty jobs and wherever else they had to go in their lives, and the maps were carved by the bastards that hurt those women with God only knows what kind of weapons (scalpels). I hope this makes sense to somebody. Thanks for reading.