This is an incredibly bittersweet and also existential song, about how to continue living your life in the midst of the grief of loss. It seems to be about your lover breaking up with you, although the first line ("I knew you were gone") is ambiguous whether she has left or has died, making the song so much more powerful. If she has died, it seems ambiguous to me whether her leaving is an action she has chosen (first verse: "go your way", last verse: "what was it made you run"), i.e. whether it was suicide.
I really like the way that the third verse evokes ancient wisdom through the phrase "fortunes of fables" and places it alongside what sounds like a very modern (by which I mean very hippie 60s) sentiment "to sing the blues you've got to live the tunes," really lingering on the word "tunes" which is a lyric that I cannot imagine being chosen by anyone who didn't have a strong hippie (or maybe beatnik) streak.
For some reason, I became interested in this song (and played it over and over again) at the same time that I was watching the remake of the series Battlestar Galactica. The premise of this entire series is based on the need to carry on despite sudden, tremendous loss: the near total destruction of the entire human race by the Cylons. (There is even some ambiguity whether this destruction could be considered a suicide, considering that the Cylons were created by man.) I used to listen to this song and imagine that it was written from the perspective of Gaius Baltar, waking up with the shock of the initial, massive nuclear attack to find that his beautiful lover Caprica Six (in the role of his lover who has left him, the "girl" in the last verse) has been killed. Of course if you know the show, you know she did't actually die, although she did leave him, in a way ... ahhh, maybe it's just me and maybe I'm just a sic fi nerd, the song just REALLY seems to fit the show :)
This is an incredibly bittersweet and also existential song, about how to continue living your life in the midst of the grief of loss. It seems to be about your lover breaking up with you, although the first line ("I knew you were gone") is ambiguous whether she has left or has died, making the song so much more powerful. If she has died, it seems ambiguous to me whether her leaving is an action she has chosen (first verse: "go your way", last verse: "what was it made you run"), i.e. whether it was suicide.
I really like the way that the third verse evokes ancient wisdom through the phrase "fortunes of fables" and places it alongside what sounds like a very modern (by which I mean very hippie 60s) sentiment "to sing the blues you've got to live the tunes," really lingering on the word "tunes" which is a lyric that I cannot imagine being chosen by anyone who didn't have a strong hippie (or maybe beatnik) streak.
For some reason, I became interested in this song (and played it over and over again) at the same time that I was watching the remake of the series Battlestar Galactica. The premise of this entire series is based on the need to carry on despite sudden, tremendous loss: the near total destruction of the entire human race by the Cylons. (There is even some ambiguity whether this destruction could be considered a suicide, considering that the Cylons were created by man.) I used to listen to this song and imagine that it was written from the perspective of Gaius Baltar, waking up with the shock of the initial, massive nuclear attack to find that his beautiful lover Caprica Six (in the role of his lover who has left him, the "girl" in the last verse) has been killed. Of course if you know the show, you know she did't actually die, although she did leave him, in a way ... ahhh, maybe it's just me and maybe I'm just a sic fi nerd, the song just REALLY seems to fit the show :)