new interpretation of Black

Thats what i thought when i first heard it, it sounds like its someone trying to get over the loss of someone. It sounds like he doing that by painting over all his pictures of her with Black.

I am so annoyed at myself. In Black, the lyrics are arranged
"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star
PAUSE
in somebody elses sky..."

as a result of that pause, i always take the word "star" to mean celebrity, when this is clearly not the case. so annoying.

Evvo wrote:

I am so annoyed at myself. In Black, the lyrics are arranged
"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star
PAUSE
in somebody elses sky..."

as a result of that pause, i always take the word "star" to mean celebrity, when this is clearly not the case. so annoying.

That's not as bad as this. Every time I hear the line "into your garden of stone" in Garden, I imagine Stone Gossard sitting in front of a little vegetable patch holding his guitar.

black88 wrote:

That's not as bad as this. Every time I hear the line "into your garden of stone" in Garden, I imagine Stone Gossard sitting in front of a little vegetable patch holding his guitar.

Hm that's what I always imagine... and that's very weird!!!

We should establish fundamental facts about Black, one of which should be that's it's a song about a break-up.

And now the questions...

a.) Should I kill them? Become their friend? Ouch, bad joke.

b.) Why are the narrator's hands "bitter?" Why bitter, as opposed to just being upset? The narrator's fault? Something out of their control?

c.) Why is there a specific mention of children? And why does the narrator sear? Is the narrator alluding to a possible pregnancy as being the reason for the break-up?

d.) Is it possible that the "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life" lines are not about the girl at all but about a child given up for adoption?

Just some food for thought.

lucylespian wrote:

"Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay"

To me this is talking about new sexual discovery using an analogy of an artist approaching a blank canvas/freshclay. Equally it may be referring to the sheets on a bed with no woman there.
I think the beauty of these lyrics is that they mean many things at once.
I think the laughter of the children at play just represents happiness in general, and provides a strong contrast to the "blackness" of the narrators thoughts.
"All I taught her was everything", might mean that he taught her everything she new, implying virginity, or that he held back nothing, implying total commmitment.
Your artist analogy has a lot in it, just needs a bit more work

I often think of Patrick Kavanagh's lyric, On Raglan Road, here:

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day.

......

Similar ideas: clay = mortality/earthiness/sexuality/material for art.

The subject of Black, like the subject of On Raglan Road, is a male artist/writer/speaker realising that, though he has endeavoured to construct his lover as a female idyll, she, as a genuinely strong woman, has rebelled, and shattered his masculinist Pygmalion myth (by escaping from his clutches). Both lyrics express a male artist/writer, failing to control a more emotionally mature, unobtainable female. In Kavanagh's case, the speaker of the lyric is chasing after a woman who is to an extent "cultivated" by his art but still autonomous and independent. In the case of Black, the tension arises in that the sheets of clay belong to the speaker's artist girlfriend. She will always control the means of her own self-representation: she is a superior artist to him, and part of his loss is his frustrated realisation of the limits of his creative vision in controlling this strong woman.

Both songs portray a male protagonist's attempts to control his escaped beloved, through imaginative construction of her in narrative, and through a certain self-pitying elegy that suggests a prior intimacy. However, On Raglan Road hints, through exaggerated rhyme and metre, at the facile and mawkish nature of such laments, at the expense of the speaker's voice and to the strength of the lyric as a piece of clever psychological observation. I don't know if Black has that level of self awareness and development.

Well all of you are missing one big thing. Black is the theme throughout the song.

"Oh how quick the sun can drop away" What happens when the sun drops away???..it is night and BLACK..thus the theme of blackness and sadness..just like when his sun(who the world revolved around dropped away or left) And all he is left with is the picture all been washed and black

"All the love gone bad turned my world to Black" THIS is why the song is called BLACK................................

His sun has left..the girl who lighted his world..and now she will be a star in someone elses sky..the metaphor is that she was his sun and now she is gone and his world is black. all 5 horizons revolved around the sun..she was everything to his world. this is why black will always be my favorite..fucking incredible heartfelt lyrics.

fran9480 wrote:

We should establish fundamental facts about Black, one of which should be that's it's a song about a break-up.

And now the questions...

a.) Should I kill them? Become their friend? Ouch, bad joke.

b.) Why are the narrator's hands "bitter?" Why bitter, as opposed to just being upset? The narrator's fault? Something out of their control?

c.) Why is there a specific mention of children? And why does the narrator sear? Is the narrator alluding to a possible pregnancy as being the reason for the break-up?

d.) Is it possible that the "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life" lines are not about the girl at all but about a child given up for adoption?

Just some food for thought.

EXCELLENT!
Note. Washed in black- Referring to a photograph that has been developed but nothing is there? A relationship that was "taken" but never "developed"
untouched sheets of clay I think is a seperate sentence...not relating to "sheets of empty canvas"
I see it as unmolded clay as an inexperienced woman or himself as an unexperienced man.

I think the songs meaning is clear. I agree the song seems to have something to do with the art/artist, and would probably guess the girl he loves is probably an artist and her things left in his presence, like the canvas, lace, etc. and he uses those things that are left untouched because she's gone as a reference to things that are really untouched and no longer used by them, like the bed, the lace, etc. (lace spread out before me, like her body once did) hummm, and sheets of empty canvas, meaning sheets on an empty bed. The girl is obviously everything to him, and is is deeply inlove and his world has turned BLACK possibly referring to the absence of color, being that she is gone, possiby meaning she is a painter, and there is no more color.

I don't think that it is neccesary to analyse every word in a song
it is obvious that it's a love song about break up

I think that colour BLACK represents his life that has no meaning now when the person he loved is gone

for me all of PJ's songs have deep meaning which is beyond words,especially this one...and that everybody can add their own meaning to the song based on their life experience