The latest in a semi-regular series in which a poem is analyzed to determine what it is really trying to tell us.
The Chills’ EP Rolling Moon was released just before Christmas 1982. The songs “Bite” and “Flame-thrower” are on the B-side; and the cover, by Martin Phillipps, is bright green and shows the band members in black and white posing with their imagined superpowers.
This series on poetry was meant to include song lyrics: we have so many poet-musicians in Aotearoa. When the devastating news came last month that Martin Phillipps of The Chills had died, it seemed like the right time to write about song lyrics, and to start with Phillipps.
I’ve always loved the way The Chills evoke wonder, awe and mystery. One of my favourite songs is “Heavenly Pop Hit” because the lightheartedness of the music hides the Judgement Day, ecstatic apocalypse scene that is taking place in the lyrics. “Rolling Moon” is a bit similar: the melody is catchy, a chart-topper. But the lyrics evoke a journey to another world. For me, this song, like “Heavenly Pop Hit”, is a magic spell: it sings of transcendence, of humanity catching a glimpse of the long-forgotten land in the mist and being swept up by its possibilities. This song contains sadness and joy, excitement and melancholy. It brings together childlike wonder and adult gloom and I love that: these songs make me emotional, happy-sad, childlike.
Reading notes:
We wander lost, forgotten hills
Blue sky, green grass, we are still
The mist envelops us gently and smells
Breeze in our ears tells softly
Of the days of light and laughter long ago
Immediately we are transported to a lost land. A place that sounds idyllic with “blue skies” and “green grass” – classic hallmarks of paradise. But there is also fog. Fog is the stuff of mystery and magic; and memories and time pass. This land is Avalon-like and full of life with its own stories: it has its own scent, it tells of days gone by, days of “light and laughter”. Here an Eden unfolds. A story of a journey back to a happier time.
They sense us, taste us, touch our hair
Show us a castle and show us her cave – her cave
And the rolling moon rocks past
We dance until we start crying
Who is the “they”? We’re still at the image of the mist, so there’s something ghostly about that “they.” The people and memories of this lost, forgotten land call the “us” into their world. “They track us down, taste us, touch our hair” is such a beautiful line. Tender and gentle and childlike. The castle evokes the image of the castle in the air – that faraway place of dreams and fantasy. But then we have “cave,” which takes on a very different tone: a cave brings to mind hunters and hunted, a dark place of possible death. This has all the hallmarks of a fairy tale: beautiful, but ominous.
“We Dance Until We Cry” continues this changed tone: here there is ecstasy and release, but now there is a shadowy mood.
We have feverish sweats and aching bones
But please, oh God, don’t take us home
It’s pretty cool, but we can’t rest
The purple sun sets in the west
The energy has soared: the ecstasy of this faraway place has permeated the visitors, physically draining them – “achey bones” is the physical exhaustion most of us feel after a night of drinking (or just living life after 35). The line “But please, oh God, don’t take us home” is a cry to stay in the magic. Although it’s exhausting, they never want to leave and return to reality. This becomes the chorus of the song, a cry to the powers that be, a desire to stay inside and escape.
“It’s pretty cool but we can’t rest” reflects the idea of dancing until you cry: doing what you love but getting soaked in the process. “The purple sun sets in the west” is another striking image that reminds us of the awe and beauty of this place. Purple is the color of other worlds, of kings and castles.
We dance on golden-red summer lawns
Dragonblood evening, the hum of the swarms
Far away from lawn mowers that mow summer lawns
I realize we are really quite far away, far away
This is my favorite verse in the song. It combines the fantasy setting with the magic of familiar places. It’s a summer song: the “golden red summer lawn” is so reminiscent of the long, grass-scented evenings we know here. “Dragon’s Blood Evening” is reminiscent of a red sunset, a mighty, big sky breathing the fire of the sun. The “buzz of the swarms”: flies, mosquitoes! And the lawnmowers – those mechanical dragons that eat up our grass and give off that fresh smell. The sound of suburban summer.
“I realise we are really quite far away, far away” – I love the idea that the heady days of summer can feel like another planet for a while; that you can get lost in those long days where time slowly becomes irrelevant; but also that Aotearoa is far away. We have summer when it’s winter on the other side of the world. We are the beautiful, heavenly land.
Far away, far away
And the rolling moon rocks past
We dance until we start crying
We have feverish sweats and aching bones
There’s this chorus here that’s kind of stressful. The exhausting night, the bliss that turns to pain, the working yourself up into a frenzy and collapsing at the other end but not wanting it to stop. I love the image of the moon as a rolling stone, a boulder in the sky, marking the passage of time as well as the clear kind of non-time of the night.
But please, oh God, don’t take us home
Please, oh God, don’t take us home
Please, oh God, don’t take us home
And that kind of tragic cry: The wonderful escape, the night, the seasons and the ecstasy must all come to an end, but please don’t let that happen.
Thanks for the music, Martin Phillipps.
