This is among the most sophisticated songs ever written; it is true literature.
The verses alternate between a young person with a broken heart and old folks who are passing away. What links them together is Time, in this song represented by "the cleaners".
Time heals all wounds, including the young person's broken heart. But there's a paradox because the passage of time is also leading us inexorably toward death.
The cleaners will clean our broken little hearts but they will also, eventually, clean every last trace of us off the Earth.
What is the solution to this paradox (the "answer to all our fears")?
For a Christian like Nick Cave, the solution is to embrace Christ, so that Time ceases to be a set of cleaners wiping us from history, and becomes a train carrying us in the direction of the Kingdom which we will reach at death.
We lost this answer in our pursuit of winnings (earthly possessions); the desire for earthly possessions is a trap ("a gulag") which keeps us from discovering the way out.
Jim rediscovered the answer (the Kingdom) at death, and then the narrator has a conversion experience (much like Nick Cave). He "once was blind" but now can see, he was "held in chains" (in the gulag) but now is free.
As soon as he has this conversion experience, his experience of time changes from dread (fear of getting old) to anticipation (of meeting God at death). Instantaneously he is free of the gulag and celebrates, even before the train of his new life starts moving. Merely being pointed in the right direction (being born again) is a basis for happiness.
You might expect that having been freed of his chains and having gotten on the train, the narrator would now "lift up his voice" and "rejoice". But here is where the song, to me, becomes literature. If you'll note, the rejoicing comes before he gets on the train. That is, I think, because the song is actually the means by which he will be saved. Lifting up his voice to God in song (accepting Christ) is the act that converts his heart to God, puts him on the train and keeps him heading toward the Kingdom. You might even say that rejoicing (ie exclaiming Christ as one's saviour) is the train itself.
The lesson of the song is that instead of singing our woes (our broken little hearts, poor old Jim, the light is dim) we should change our tune so to speak and lift up our voices in song to God.
@seanbrady I don't know about it being a song about song. But I like the other things you have to say. I've listened to three songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and had no idea he was a Christian. He writes from a viewpoint directly opposite that in "Into My Arms," for instance. But I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when interpreting his work, certainly.
@seanbrady I don't know about it being a song about song. But I like the other things you have to say. I've listened to three songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and had no idea he was a Christian. He writes from a viewpoint directly opposite that in "Into My Arms," for instance. But I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when interpreting his work, certainly.
This is among the most sophisticated songs ever written; it is true literature.
The verses alternate between a young person with a broken heart and old folks who are passing away. What links them together is Time, in this song represented by "the cleaners".
Time heals all wounds, including the young person's broken heart. But there's a paradox because the passage of time is also leading us inexorably toward death.
The cleaners will clean our broken little hearts but they will also, eventually, clean every last trace of us off the Earth.
What is the solution to this paradox (the "answer to all our fears")?
For a Christian like Nick Cave, the solution is to embrace Christ, so that Time ceases to be a set of cleaners wiping us from history, and becomes a train carrying us in the direction of the Kingdom which we will reach at death.
We lost this answer in our pursuit of winnings (earthly possessions); the desire for earthly possessions is a trap ("a gulag") which keeps us from discovering the way out.
Jim rediscovered the answer (the Kingdom) at death, and then the narrator has a conversion experience (much like Nick Cave). He "once was blind" but now can see, he was "held in chains" (in the gulag) but now is free.
As soon as he has this conversion experience, his experience of time changes from dread (fear of getting old) to anticipation (of meeting God at death). Instantaneously he is free of the gulag and celebrates, even before the train of his new life starts moving. Merely being pointed in the right direction (being born again) is a basis for happiness.
You might expect that having been freed of his chains and having gotten on the train, the narrator would now "lift up his voice" and "rejoice". But here is where the song, to me, becomes literature. If you'll note, the rejoicing comes before he gets on the train. That is, I think, because the song is actually the means by which he will be saved. Lifting up his voice to God in song (accepting Christ) is the act that converts his heart to God, puts him on the train and keeps him heading toward the Kingdom. You might even say that rejoicing (ie exclaiming Christ as one's saviour) is the train itself.
The lesson of the song is that instead of singing our woes (our broken little hearts, poor old Jim, the light is dim) we should change our tune so to speak and lift up our voices in song to God.
It is a song, therefore, about song.
@seanbrady I don't know about it being a song about song. But I like the other things you have to say. I've listened to three songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and had no idea he was a Christian. He writes from a viewpoint directly opposite that in "Into My Arms," for instance. But I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when interpreting his work, certainly.
@seanbrady I don't know about it being a song about song. But I like the other things you have to say. I've listened to three songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and had no idea he was a Christian. He writes from a viewpoint directly opposite that in "Into My Arms," for instance. But I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when interpreting his work, certainly.