Heartland

Given that I don't thrive on lucidity, that my own experience of the world will no doubt affect my interpretation of a song.........and that as Dan once so eloquently commented, it could just be a load of coincidental bollox, I give you


HUNTER S THOMPSON - HELLS ANGELS

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the
highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil slick...
instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one
of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: "An unidentified
motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn
on Highway 1."

Indeed... but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth,
and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over,
reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle
leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down
the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.
But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin,
and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and
that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so
far that fear becomes exhileration and vibrates along your arms. You
can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they
vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind
and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white
line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right,
then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off
now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and
another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way
to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are
the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who
pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then
pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came
time to choose between Now and Later.
-----------


something will happen here
I can feel it
on the howling edge of pink and white and blue
something, right here
I can feel it

and now it's just too real to
still believe in you
and will I ...dream?
when it's over will I dream?
when it's over will I?
when it's happened will I?
when it's over will I dream?

something is happening here
I can feel it
on the howling edge of pink and white and baby -
will I ...dream?
when it's over will I dream?
when it's over will I?
when it's happened will I?
when it's over will I dream?

something has happened here
I can feel it
on the howling edge of pink and white and steely blue
something, right here
I can feel it

and now it's just too real
to will belief in you
and will I ...dream?
when it's over will I dream?
when it's over will I?
when it's happened will I?
when it's over will I dream?

Okay, so here's what I draw form this passage and the lyrics of the song
three tenses, will, is and has happened

>>on the howling edge of pink and white and blue

howling and edge are both contained within the text, in the context of being at the extremity, if not just beyond, of safety

pink and white, are high frequency noise, somewhat akin to over-revving of a bike engine, steely blue is the colour of heat treated steel, say for example pistons or cylinders.

Baby is a personification for the bike,

That's about it

Cheers

i always thought the chorus was about hal in 2001

but i like your idea

I like it too. Dunno if I'd bet my last packet of crisps (staple currency in Chrisland) on AE having picked up on the Thompson bit. There is, after all, an old Sisters bootleg called 'The Howling Edge', but it sounds like an enlightening interpretation of the song. Of course, I hope that we may find out more when AE gets around to writing a proper chorus for the song, but that's another story...

Always reminded me of Big Black's "Sleep", for some reason, with the obvious death/sleep connotations, but it could be just about Von going to bed at night.

and now it's just too real to
still believe in you

and now it's just too real
to will belief in you

I think the key to this lyric is the above two lines. My take is the songs about belief. Belief and dreams at least for me go hand in hand. When belief is gone and you cant even will yourself to believe I imagine you’d wonder if you could ever dream again, and I’m not talking about dreams when you sleep.

Nice research Paint it black. That's a good book, up 'til the very last chapter me thinks.

As for the chorus I've been under the impression that it's about faith and death and loosing faith at a near death experience. Like in the Shakespear passage from 'amlet: for in that sleep of death, what dreams will come?

I like that idea.

I reckon it's more of a mood piece (tho that could be levelled at a lot of AEs lyrics) as theres very little solid to go on.

Pink, white and blue are all types of noise (in the actual sense of th word) - Pink is high freg, blue is low, and white is the whole spectrum.

I'd like to hope that the song isn't about something so crass as motorbikes. Even DB has more than car references in it.

I think Planets right that the closest you get to an event within the song are the lines about belief.

The tense of the song changes in that the first person is about to go through "something", which then happens (although they still can't/won't put it into words). I guess the "something" is largely irrelevant as it depends on the identity of the "you" (and vice versa), so how you read one affects the other.

Obe interpretation is to take a religious angle (unlikely that it's the definitive one) and take the "you" that he can't believe in, to be god, which opens up plenty of options for the "something". I guess you could also see it in the context of a relationship, or politics.

I love Will I Dream. At the Astoria in 2001 AE said "This is about impossibility," as it started.

Probably a mood piece then. Kind of bowie-esque.

Oooh, I hope not. Incidentally, how many people read the 'Eldritch interviews Bowie' piece from a few years back? It turned into a bit of a tiff, and I'm not sure if it was published in the end. Or was it? I quite enjoyed it, and Bowie deserved a kicking for talking a kind of ill-thought-through postmodern-babble. But I also thought that Von was being extremely negative, pushing things a bit far, and in the end he produced a piece that I probably wouldn't have considered publishable either.

Eldritch interviews, eh? Great entertainment for die-hard Sisters fans, but they don't exactly do much to convert the unconverted, do they? His dictionary runs straight from component to computer without the detour to compromise, methinks.

MrChris wrote:Oooh, I hope not. Incidentally, how many people read the 'Eldritch interviews Bowie' piece from a few years back? It turned into a bit of a tiff, and I'm not sure if it was published in the end. Or was it? I quite enjoyed it, and Bowie deserved a kicking for talking a kind of ill-thought-through postmodern-babble. But I also thought that Von was being extremely negative, pushing things a bit far, and in the end he produced a piece that I probably wouldn't have considered publishable either.

Eldritch interviews, eh? Great entertainment for die-hard Sisters fans, but they don't exactly do much to convert the unconverted, do they? His dictionary runs straight from component to computer without the detour to compromise, methinks.

I seem to remember it wasn't published - it was intended for German rolling stone, but even they won't take Vons vitriol apparently.

I don't think either was in the right - Von shouldn't have done the interview if all he wanted to do was say "youre past it", but Bowie should never have released that crap

http://back.to/UTR

David Bowie or Leonard Cohen interviews!

Watch out for the popups....

try Hal's site. No pop ups

khepri II wrote:try Hal's site. No pop ups

nah, rather don't look at it, the colours are really bad. One day I'll get around to tidying up the interviews part of my site. one day.

Pop ups can be organised for certain parts of my site if there is sufficient demand

hallucienate wrote:

khepri II wrote:try Hal's site. No pop ups

nah, rather don't look at it, the colours are really bad. One day I'll get around to tidying up the interviews part of my site. one day.

Pop ups can be organised for certain parts of my site if there is sufficient demand

Sorry Hal!

I forgot about your site!

Big Si wrote:I forgot about your site!

sometimes I wish I could

I always thinking that its just about being high on drugs, you know the pink and white are references to forms of speed (like in detonation boulevard) and the steel blue is the knive to cut it.
Yes i know that in this way the song sound like a f**king stupid song for sixteen years old teens.

The "Will I Dream?" quotation is from 2010, as is this:

Bowman: -You see, something's going to happen. You must leave.
Floyd: -What? What's going to happen?
Bowman: -Something wonderful.

Don't know if it has been discussed before, but Andrew has certainly altered the lyrics to this has time has worn on.

For example the line "and now it's just too real to
still believe in you" has been changed into rushing through, etc.


Anybody know exactly what he says here now?