Good Evening this is Rabid Radio! I hope my fellow midwesterners are huddling in their homes instead of struggling in the snow. Staying cosy and warm indoors? I know I am. I am, in fact, so cozy that I succumbed to the soporific snow and lazed about all day instead of working on your radio requests. Much apologies, my good listeners. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
So here we are, music lovers. An indie rock selection by Hush Sound...requested by the Sensational Sarah. As before, I'll let you familiarize yourself with the song before I start mutilating it.
I actually really liked breaking this one down because it involved one of my favorite things: Greek mythology references. Specifically Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. These are combined with a bit of Christian Mythology to paint a nice little picture of the treacherous waters of love...Hey, it's old ground for the music industry
Who shot that arrow in your throat?
Who missed the crimson apple?
It hung heavy on the tree above your head
This chaos, this calamity, this garden once was perfect
Give your immortality to me; I'll set you up against the stars
See what I mean? This is a great combination of Greek and Christian mythology right here...a mix of symbols all leading to the same general theme. Now "Who shot that arrow in your throat?" could mean all kinds of things...but combined with the later references to lying lovers as well as the other Homerian links I'm going to go with it being a reference to Antinous. Antinous is a character in The Odyssey. While Odysseus is struggling to get home, Penelope is beset by suitors who break the codes of hospitality as they court her and ravage his lands. One of the more prominent of the suitors is Antinous, who went the furthest in breaking the Grecian codes of hospitality when he refuses to help a beggar (Odysseus in disguise). He is the first to die at Odysseus's hand by...you guessed it...an arrow in the throat.
A crimson apple in a tree? Old-school symbol of innocence and virginity in the poetry world. This, of course, comes from the Genesis story of Adam and Eve's fall from Eden. It doesn't really matter that the fruit wasn't necessarily an apple, let alone a crimson one. Over time, it has come to stand for innocence and the loss of it.
We then jump from the Christian Tree-of-Knowledge apple to Eris's Apple of Discord. In The Iliad, the Trojan War is started when Eris offers up the Golden apple of discord to the fairest of all. This starts a major cat-fight between the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite as to who should win the apple. They each attempt to bribe the judge, the Trojan prince Paris, but Aphrodite wins when she offers him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. The only problem was that Helen was married already, and her defection to Troy started the invasion. Since then, the apple of discord has come to mean a point of contention and a classic symbol of chaos and the dangers of love.
Then we go back to the story of the fall with the "perfect garden" and the giving of immortality. The perfect garden could easily represent Eden and the loss of innocence that came from taking the apple prompts Adam and Eve's ejection from the garden and immortality. However, there is a dual meaning to the perfect garden that I will come back to with the final verse.
Gloria,
We lied, we can't go on
This is the time and this is the place to be alive
Who shot that arrow in your throat?
Who missed the crimson apple?
And there is discord in the garden tonight
I wanted to find a deeper meaning for the name Gloria...but I honestly couldn't find anything beyond its Latin meaning of "glory". Boring. It's used in Christian songs a lot, but I really can't see this as being any more significant than a simple girl's name.
This part is mostly a repetition of earlier themes, but it does clear up what the story behind the references is. We have two characters, the speaker and "Gloria". "Welied, we can't go on" implies that they both lied about their ability to move on...most likely to themselves.
Gloria is the person whose throat has been pierced, so she is whom the Antinous reference is supposed to be attached to. I highly doubt this has something to do with the Greek concept of hospitality. The more likely conclusion is that Gloria attempted to woo someone who was already taken. The missed apple means she tried to give herself to this person and failed. Discord in the garden either refers to a question of beauty (in which case Gloria is likely unsure if she's pretty enough for this person she attempted to seduce) or it is indicating that the attempted seduction is the crux of the issue. Most likely it is a combination of the two.
The sea is wine red
This is the death of beauty
The doves have died
The lovers have lied
The symbols here are pretty straightforward. We have the sensuousness of the red wine and the innocence of the doves. This just clarifies the story further. Gloria loved someone and attempted to seduce him. He (assumption based on the fact that the song is sung by a man and a woman) was already involved with another, very beautiful woman. However, she was unaware of this due to a deception on his part (The lovers have lied) and she lost a bit of her innocence in the pursuit of his love.
I cut the arrow from your neck
Stretched you beneath the tree
Among the roots and baby's breath
I covered us with silver leaves
Now the speaker makes his case to Gloria. He heals her wounds and lays her in the baby's breath under a tree with silver leaves. Baby's breath, in flower symbolism, means innocence and purity. I looked up several trees with silver leaves and the most likely candidate was the Pyrus salicifolia, a silver-leaved variety of pear tree. Why did I choose this one? It also appears in The Odyssey. Pears grow in Alcinous' "sublime garden" in the story. In this garden, the fruit never falls or perishes. Pears also have a symbolic meaning of immortality, which links to the previous reference to trees in a garden.
So, to put it all together, we have the story of Gloria. She loved a man, who likely encouraged her attentions, and to whom she wished to give herself. However, he was already in a relationship. I would even go so far as to guess that Gloria was friends with this person, because the line "the lovers lied" implies that both were involved and it makes sense that she knew the lover. The speaker sees her in her state of betrayal and is attempting to restore her innocence, not by moving on and forgetting the circumstances, but by remaining where she is and gathering her previous innocence back to herself.
I did a bit more guessing in this one, but I like putting together a coherent story. There are many ways this song could have been interpreted, but this one seems to flow the best for me.
Until tomorrow, sleep well. And if you live in the Midwestern United States...stay safe and off the roads. Goodnight.
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