Nine while nine

[Anubiso]

Hey friends
It's my first post here.

I wanted to translate the lyrics of (Nine while nine) to my language, because I found it full of poetry, But as you might see It's vague somehow, so I ask you a favour, I ask you to give me as much as possible of explanations that based on your culture to help me to translate this wonderful song.

Thanks SOS fans

[Being645]

Hi Anubiso, welcome here ... ...

There is a thread on Nine While Nine here:
http://myheartland.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1000

I didn't read it, actually, but it should give you some impression ...

[Anubiso]

Yeah, I've read it all, I think they concentrated there on the phrase (nine while nine) not all the song.

[Being645]

Did you read the second page as well? I think it's more focussing on the lyrics as a whole ...

What part of the lyrics do you find most cryptical?

[Anubiso]

I really read it all

Let’s see the vague parts for me:
“And I think you know let's
Drink to the dead lying under the water and the
Cost of the blood on the driven snow and the
Lipstick on my cigarettes
Frost upon the window pane�

I know that they say (pure as driven snow), but I still don’t know what does he mean here.

And:
“She said do you remember a time when angels
Do you remember a time when fear
In the days when I was stronger
In the days when you were here she said
When days had no beginning
While days had no end when
Shadows grew no longer I
Knew no other friend but you
Were wild
You were wild.....�

I’m a bit confused who’s talking here.

Instead of that I really need to know your different general views about the lyrics.

[Being645]

All I know is the version on the original vinyl. A song about visiting a friend,
a girl who might once have been in love with one, a girl one knew from say,
the old days, before one left that place ... and the illusions. The illusions one
might have had when leaving, and the illusions one might be fostering now.
And the thing one is missing in one's life all the time ...

But this is only a few first touches and "illusions" is surely an expression too
cynical to describe the actual condition ... it's more the very existential need
for love.

[LouLou]

you're reading too much into it.

shurely it's just getting worked up about trains being late all the time?

[Being645]

... and this is only a short first excerpt of my "reading" ...

Anyway, isn't there also a song called Train ... ...

[LouLou]

yeah, that one's about the train set got for his 7th b-day. it was one of 'em really cool ones with tunnels and stuff.

[Being645]

... you take things very short ...

I guess there have also been stations ... mountains, villages ... and signposts to a larger city ... ...

Every boy that age had one at that time (that much about our culture).
My brother as well. I was not allowed to play with it ... because of that idiot body, I'm born with ... ...

[LouLou]

you are kidding, right? about the not being allowed to play with the train set part?

[Anubiso]

Thanks friends I think you are very helpful (ones)

[Being645]

oh no, it was still normal in the 60ies that girls should not play with such things ... and in Germany things were surely worse than in Britain.

[Being645]

Thanks friends I think you are very helpful (ones)

And you ... which country are you from? How are the girls treated over there, and the boys?





*sorry, if that sounded a bit rude.
If you want, you can send me a PM and I give you a more detailed version of my reading.

[eastmidswhizzkid]

... you take things very short ...

I guess there have also been stations ... mountains, villages ... and signposts to a larger city ... ...

Every boy that age had one at that time (that much about our culture).
My brother as well. I was not allowed to play with it ... because of that idiot body, I'm born with ... ...

a friend of mine was allowed to play with his train set as long as he didn't make accompaning train noises....

[lachert]

i've got train with few trees, tunnel etc. when i was kid and my sisters wasn't very attracted to it. not problem with share toys at all, rather she always preffer stupid dolls and playing in "fake shop with fake money" i must do it sometimes when i need her to make some bigger war with toysoldiers

[Being645]

... you take things very short ...

I guess there have also been stations ... mountains, villages ... and signposts to a larger city ... ...

Every boy that age had one at that time (that much about our culture).
My brother as well. I was not allowed to play with it ... because of that idiot body, I'm born with ... ...

a friend of mine was allowed to play with his train set as long as he didn't make accompaning train noises....

... uah, yeah, that comes close to it ... might have been even worse, depends ... ... my tears for those horrible years of your friend ...

and this (maybe yet slight, depends) encouragement ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AonX90ww ... r_embedded

So many of us were treated with such an idiotic idiocy ... and it goes on ...
I'm sorry for all the lives and beings wasted away for nothing, just nothing ...

[Being645]

i've got train with few trees, tunnel etc. when i was kid and my sisters wasn't very attracted to it. not problem with share toys at all, rather she always preffer stupid dolls and playing in "fake shop with fake money" i must do it sometimes when i need her to make some bigger war with toysoldiers

... ... my brother wasn't all that much into his trains. It was somewhat asking too much of him, because of all the things around ... so relatively soon and from then on most of the time, the train was stored on top of my parents bedroom cabitnet, wrapped into plastic foil to keep the dust off ... ...

I spent as much time as possible outside, in the heathen, in the fields, in the trees ... with and without friends. Far away from cold and stiff idiot puppets and fake shops, and a brother ...

My mother controlled and unconsciously destroyed all relations within the family in order to make every thing and every body perfect ... so much under pressure. Don' t know, what she had seen during the regime and war ... it was deeply impressing. That much is sure.

Anyway, this is not exactly on Nine While Nine, touching things only slightly ... relations ... affection ... fidelity ... trust ... and the one one is and has to be.

What I love most about Nine While Nine is the moment when the singing is done and Andrew takes the microphone off his lips ... and yeah, this silence is happiness ... entire happiness ... worlds between worlds ...

Thanks for not having cut it off "perfectly".

[BaroqueHyena]

I really read it all

Let’s see the vague parts for me:
“And I think you know let's
Drink to the dead lying under the water and the
Cost of the blood on the driven snow and the
Lipstick on my cigarettes
Frost upon the window pane�

I know that they say (pure as driven snow), but I still don’t know what does he mean here.

The dead lying under the water-- they're gone, and the blood on the snow is a reminder, along with lipstick on the cigarette. You can't clean blood off of snow-- got to wait till it melts if you don't want to see the blood anymore. As for the lipstick, you can't wipe that off, and it'd be best to throw the cigarette away before it does you any more damage...
Driven snow I can't really help with, as I'd never heard that phrase before getting in the Sisters. Any cold-climate folks wanna elaborate on this?

And:
“She said do you remember a time when angels
Do you remember a time when fear
In the days when I was stronger
In the days when you were here she said
When days had no beginning
While days had no end when
Shadows grew no longer I
Knew no other friend but you
Were wild
You were wild.....�

I’m a bit confused who’s talking here.

I think he's recalling a conversation they had when they were still on good terms. He's confused-- why's all that got to change?

My thoughts, anyway.

Also, as a child I had a wooden train set that I used to build tracks all around the house with. My older brother didn't love that train set nearly as much as I did! Then again, I always loved his toys far more than my dollies and such. I wanted to build something!

[stufarq]

Driven snow I can't really help with, as I'd never heard that phrase before getting in the Sisters. Any cold-climate folks wanna elaborate on this?

Snow that's blown into piles by the wind forms snowdrifts, which are said to be driven (by the driving wind). Perhaps more relevant, the phrase "pure as the driven snow" means untouched or morally clean, which relates to the blood tainting it in the song. Shakespeare referred to a lawn as white as driven snow in The Winter's Tale.

"The dead lying under the water" may be a reference to The Lord Of The Rings or, more likely, Dante's Inferno (cf the cover of Body And Soul). There are probably other examples but I can't think of any off hand.

[markfiend]

See also Tallulah Bankhead's "I'm as pure as the driven slush".

[Being645]

See also Tallulah Bankhead's "I'm as pure as the driven slush".

... ... a lovely contrast ... the natural development ... ...

[Anubiso]

BaroqueHyena-stufarq

Thank you very much

[Being645]

Let’s see the vague parts for me:
“And I think you know let's

So you do want some more? ... ...

Well, I think, these two people were not a couple but rather friends before,
because she (the girl, who might have sent letters to the guy after he left) says
he was "wild" - somehow unreachable, untouchable, or maybe too far away, too busy,
or somewhat forbidden to her or never decided towards her. So their love - although
it potentially existed - never came to real. Maybe, he had behaved like always
careful linger at the door but never walk on in. And then he left for some "better life" ...
like in the big city, you know, some sort of life he had longed for but without any
idea about the realities, just filled with stories and hear-say and hopes (driven like
the snow - and pure in heart, I guess). But it turned out to be painful and disappointing,
rather than great. And he thinks, she had foreseen it ...

Drink to the dead lying under the water and the

... now believing he was mistaken, willing to return and have someone to talk to
(something he might have been valuating relatively low before but regularly made
use of earlier (caught up on this line again), forget about this adventure,
say goodbye to that past, since the dead cannot be resurrected. The dead under
the water could hint at drowning - in the waters of emotional affects as (under the
water does also suggest, there could be ice above, since water - like emotional
affairs - is usually nothing to lie under. Whatever times might tell ya ...

Furthermore the choice of lie and not lay, slightly touches the fact that to lie does also
have a meaning of not telling the truth ... so it's as if they were still alive like unrestful
souls confined to under the water, walking and lying about what the things they
encounter do to themselves and why they behave the way they do, hinting at
human perception, emotional effects, motives ... and the system, the culture at
the root of this conduct ... as well as the consequences (death ... in a metaphorical
sense, I'd like to say, but it isn't all that metaphorical).

... of course, I read way too much into it ... ...

[Mariandrew]

A friend recommended I post my interpretation of the lyrics here. (I had posted elsewhere too)

An interpretation:

The author is mentally tormented by a break-up that is causing a new and unknown change of direction. This change in his life has given the sense of “time� a new dimension to him. The reference to 'time' as both a f'riend, when we remember something positive and can relive it (last part of the text) – and an enemy, when only pain and hurt is the result of time passing in front of us. The reference to this comes to life in the line 'passing slowly' and he literally wants to 'kill time' (here not just used as an idiomatic phrase) and that is contrasted in the next line with “living� “better than living in what will come�. #

The 'time' aspect permeates the whole text not only in the settings which are spelled out thus : Present: waiting for a train in the present, Past: looking back both through letters and reported direct speech, and the Future: Waiting in vain. The “time� theme is further emphasised in the many words that describe time such as time adverbs “when� mentioned five times “sometimes� “slowly� “still� “again'� , and (shadows grew)“ no longer� (two meanings here) and in the verbs 'waiting' (used twice in different contexts) and 'passing' (time) and then “in the days� and 'days had no beginning' and of course the title 'nine while nine' which may be a reference to a feeling of eternity that is associated with pain therefore has no end. There is a sense that the time is causing so much pain and a sense it is standing still, as the whole scene is set on a metaphorical train platform: A short moment of seeming eternity.

The text addresses life and death. The author is contemplating ending it all. The train here is an obvious method (better than living in what will come) but the train also is a symbol of his new direction in life, caused by the break-up with a person and /or people and it is a situation he has been in before shown here: 'caught up on this line *again*�, a notion of 'oh here I find myself yet again'. This is also a reference to the kind of downer you get when you come down from a euphoric state (drug-induced or otherwise):the line 'When days had no beginning when days had no end' – reflects this notion. When we are in love it is like being on a high that warps time. His pathetic attempt to alleviate himself from the pain is to offer to drink to the dead under the water. He longs for the moment to be in that state himself. He feels he is drowned by emotions. Those who are indeed dead are luckier than he.

The “cost of the blood on the driven snow� is both a Christian reference, but more so a reference to the fairy tale of Snow White when the evil queen pricks her finger and a single drop of blood falls on the snow outside her “window�. This theme is in fact emphasised in the next line “And the lipstick on my cigarettes Frost upon the window pane� . The snow represents purity and the blood life is itself and in this case, the snow has been carried away by the wind to another destination. Thisbis symbolic of a new life destination. the precious blood merging with the snow emphasising the change in his life.

The author looks back in time with longing. And when he reports the loved one's speech in the present “she says� but what she says she has removed to the past through her referring to the past herself “do you remember� and her speech is in the past tense “I * knew* no other friend but you were* wild". The reference to 'friend' here is a reference to the author and him having no one else to confide in. The reference to “wild� is something that is out of control in the sense that freedom has free reign. This is what the author no longer has. He feels constrained in his current situation This is why her saying that he "was wild" means so much to him. He repeats the word “wild�.

He is looking to the future and is contemplating a possible reconciliation “I am only looking for what you want� but he realises it is too late and he is on his own now “talking to myself�. He is so lost and wrapped up in that relationship, and he has lost the sense of reality, that he can only say her name at the point of realising he is having a conversation with himself (instead of with a 'friend').

He realises he is walking in the rain. “Rain� is a reference to problems and turbulent times. This is what he is going through (it is significant that it is not snow, which then underlines the snow referenced previously is a metaphor just like the rain here). The line “And it's so damn cold it's just not true� means the author is asking himself metaphysical questions. What is my life? What it life about, I am damned/is there a way out? “Cold� here is a reference to the “driven snow� and means having no comfort in anything and everything is not what it once was before it was corrupted.

He then goes back to the solution of ending it all. The train can bring an end to the suffering. There is no other way out, it is all “in vainâ€�. Whenever that train comes this will bring some end to this torture or a new direction to his life , whichever option that is. The question is left open.