Perhaps it's just me, but I feel that there are some good explanations/interpretations for this song that seem to seamlessly incorporate all the elements of sex, love, death and loss present here. First off, while there are lines that hint at his lover being dead in a real, corporeal way--"It hasn't been long so it seems/since I was picking out an island and tomb for you/at the Hollywood cemetery" being the most obvious--there are also hints that she is still alive, but is the sort of reckless, socially defiant personality that allows the singer to indulge in his own death wish and feed his current ambivalance about living by following her into the destructive storm of her personality.
Whichever is the case, he is still committing to being with her, alive or dead, even as he fears her intensity and the way he can't seem to separate himself from her influence. He is unnerved by her manic behavior and disregard for the distinctions between the mores of the living or the death--ie, "What are people gonna think?" and "We should let this dead guy sleep"--but at the same time it exhilarates him. Furthermore, when he sings, "Jesus Christ/I laid up for hours in a daze/retracing the expanse of your American back/with Adderal and weed in my veins", to me he seems to be attempting to articulate that push/pull, love/hate, life/death tug of war within himself, especially since his tone and inflection suggest a mixture of reverence and uneasy self-loathing. In being with her, he's ridden and possibly still is riding the rollercoasters of her emotions and indulges(ed?) her in her craziness both because it's sexually stimulating and because it allows him to stand on the edge and stare down into his own personal oblivion without quite tipping over into it...yet.
Whether or not the woman he pines for has passed away in the literal sense or whether he simply knows that at some point he's going to have to make a difficult choice between saving himself at her expense in order to live a less confusing life, or embracing his own death in order to be closer to her now that she's gone, I feel like the essence of the song is the same. It's fitting that the French call orgasms "la petit mort", or "the little death", and it certainly seems to apply here. It's possible he is truly mourning her loss after she has passed on, dealing with his grief by writhing against and jacking off on tombstones in the cemetery where she is buried in spite of the humiliation of people seeing him there so often he can no longer easily explain away his presence. If she's alive, he is simply a troubled man distracting himself with a woman whose problems far outweigh his own.
Either way, sex and the physical indulgence of his body are the only things that bring him comfort as he stumbles through his life wondering what, if anything, to do next. Finally, I love that for me, the line "someone's gotta help me dig" can be interpreted to mean any of the following: 1) That he wants to continue to dig the two of them deeper into his/their own dark, twisted hole so that they can be free of the prying looks of people that don't understand them; 2) that he is literally so crazed with grief over losing her that he wants to dig up her body and hopes other people will leave him alone with her corpse and his memories; or 3) he views her as the perfect partner even as she frightens him, because she is the only one willing to dig with him down into the darkest, dirtiest recesses inside him and then soothe and protect him from them with the comfort of her body.
So, yeah. I could be way off, but that's what I get out of it so far. It may be about sex in graveyards, death, and/or obsessive love or grief, or it could be that the past and present are so overlapping and intertwining for him that he simply can't tell the difference, and subsequently neither can we. I think that's what makes the song so arresting and worthy of many, many listens.
@carpeomniachica This comment about your interpretation of this song is almost 10 years old, but WOW. Thanks for this. I've been trying to digest the lyrics to this song for years but it's just so melodic and enjoyable to listen to... I get caught up in that, and never really return to the intention I had of trying to figure out what the fuck is happening with the lyrics. Now I may be obsessing over your interpretation for nearly as long.
@carpeomniachica This comment about your interpretation of this song is almost 10 years old, but WOW. Thanks for this. I've been trying to digest the lyrics to this song for years but it's just so melodic and enjoyable to listen to... I get caught up in that, and never really return to the intention I had of trying to figure out what the fuck is happening with the lyrics. Now I may be obsessing over your interpretation for nearly as long.
Perhaps it's just me, but I feel that there are some good explanations/interpretations for this song that seem to seamlessly incorporate all the elements of sex, love, death and loss present here. First off, while there are lines that hint at his lover being dead in a real, corporeal way--"It hasn't been long so it seems/since I was picking out an island and tomb for you/at the Hollywood cemetery" being the most obvious--there are also hints that she is still alive, but is the sort of reckless, socially defiant personality that allows the singer to indulge in his own death wish and feed his current ambivalance about living by following her into the destructive storm of her personality.
Whichever is the case, he is still committing to being with her, alive or dead, even as he fears her intensity and the way he can't seem to separate himself from her influence. He is unnerved by her manic behavior and disregard for the distinctions between the mores of the living or the death--ie, "What are people gonna think?" and "We should let this dead guy sleep"--but at the same time it exhilarates him. Furthermore, when he sings, "Jesus Christ/I laid up for hours in a daze/retracing the expanse of your American back/with Adderal and weed in my veins", to me he seems to be attempting to articulate that push/pull, love/hate, life/death tug of war within himself, especially since his tone and inflection suggest a mixture of reverence and uneasy self-loathing. In being with her, he's ridden and possibly still is riding the rollercoasters of her emotions and indulges(ed?) her in her craziness both because it's sexually stimulating and because it allows him to stand on the edge and stare down into his own personal oblivion without quite tipping over into it...yet.
Whether or not the woman he pines for has passed away in the literal sense or whether he simply knows that at some point he's going to have to make a difficult choice between saving himself at her expense in order to live a less confusing life, or embracing his own death in order to be closer to her now that she's gone, I feel like the essence of the song is the same. It's fitting that the French call orgasms "la petit mort", or "the little death", and it certainly seems to apply here. It's possible he is truly mourning her loss after she has passed on, dealing with his grief by writhing against and jacking off on tombstones in the cemetery where she is buried in spite of the humiliation of people seeing him there so often he can no longer easily explain away his presence. If she's alive, he is simply a troubled man distracting himself with a woman whose problems far outweigh his own.
Either way, sex and the physical indulgence of his body are the only things that bring him comfort as he stumbles through his life wondering what, if anything, to do next. Finally, I love that for me, the line "someone's gotta help me dig" can be interpreted to mean any of the following: 1) That he wants to continue to dig the two of them deeper into his/their own dark, twisted hole so that they can be free of the prying looks of people that don't understand them; 2) that he is literally so crazed with grief over losing her that he wants to dig up her body and hopes other people will leave him alone with her corpse and his memories; or 3) he views her as the perfect partner even as she frightens him, because she is the only one willing to dig with him down into the darkest, dirtiest recesses inside him and then soothe and protect him from them with the comfort of her body.
So, yeah. I could be way off, but that's what I get out of it so far. It may be about sex in graveyards, death, and/or obsessive love or grief, or it could be that the past and present are so overlapping and intertwining for him that he simply can't tell the difference, and subsequently neither can we. I think that's what makes the song so arresting and worthy of many, many listens.
@carpeomniachica This comment about your interpretation of this song is almost 10 years old, but WOW. Thanks for this. I've been trying to digest the lyrics to this song for years but it's just so melodic and enjoyable to listen to... I get caught up in that, and never really return to the intention I had of trying to figure out what the fuck is happening with the lyrics. Now I may be obsessing over your interpretation for nearly as long.
@carpeomniachica This comment about your interpretation of this song is almost 10 years old, but WOW. Thanks for this. I've been trying to digest the lyrics to this song for years but it's just so melodic and enjoyable to listen to... I get caught up in that, and never really return to the intention I had of trying to figure out what the fuck is happening with the lyrics. Now I may be obsessing over your interpretation for nearly as long.