With a little help from other Opeth fans

[Midwinter_melancholY]

I find some expressions from Still Life hard to place in its proper context, since my dictionnary seems to fail in that matter as well. Is someone of you able to explain the following eight expressions?:

"Fifteen alike since I was here" (the moor)

"The lapse of the moment took its turn" (")

"Branded a jonah with fevered blood" (")

"You'd neverleave me to
a fate with you" (")

"Melinda reflected in shafts" (Serenity Painted Death)

"Swathed in Filth, any would betoken" (")

"My next of kin" (White Cluster)

"(murmur through the crowd) Plunging into anywhere but here" (")

Also: The booklet says "all faith forever has ben led astray", but I seem to understand "All faith forever has been washed away" (Face of Melinda 5':12")

Thanks in advance!

 

[SculptedCold]

'The sigh of summer upon my return
Fifteen alike since I was here'

ie - its been fifteen summers (15 years in effect) since he's been to wherever he is in Still Life, each one supposedly 'sighing' in some way.

'The lapse of the moment took it's turn'

This is unclear to me as well. All the terms used here are temporally vague in relation to the rest of the lyrics. The 'moment' seems to be the time up until now, (ie, almost present tense) established in the preceding 3 lines. The moment being his current state of weariness and calm after 'what might have been ages'. The 'lapse' could be the thought of 'Would I prosper or fall', but this is very unclear. The 'lapse' could be something entirely outside the text for all we know. Likewise, the lapse has a 'turn', as if it was waiting to happen, as if after all the ages this moment of contemplation has finally occurred. It might be more for mood-setting than anything else, because there doesn't seem to be specific meaning, other than possibly what I've just suggested.

'Branded a Jonah with fevered blood'

Jonah was a prophet of God but came to reject his preaching duties and defied God. He tried to flee but was arrested boarding a ship because the people sensed he carried a dark and heavy secret. So, in this passage in The Moor, our persona is recalling his banishment from the community those 15 years ago.....the reason is entirely unclear, though it probably has something to do with Melinda, possibly some kind of kinky extra-marital affair or something. So he was branded a Jonah symbolically for carrying this dark secret (obviously a zero-tolerance puritan community) and banished. The fevered blood part can have two meanings, choose your fave. One, it is he who has fevered blood, ie, he's mad and can't help it (in his blood) and the fever being his sexual appetite or whatever else it could be. (this is the more likely meaning given the direct structure of the sentence) or possibly it could be the crowd condemning him that has fevered blood; in a fever of ostrasizing him.

'You'd never leave me to a fate with you'

Well, basically, Melinda on appearances wouldn't allow our persona to end-up with her....for whatever fate may bring. The structure is interesting though, it implies that fate has already chosen our persona's destiny with Melinda, and Melinda is actually by contrast the active agent who must deny this intended fate. This sets an appropriate mood for the album, as it gives us a feeling of inevitability on the part of the narrator, and rests the question and fulfillment of the album on a source we can't be sure of. What will Melinda do? It turns the course of discovery we've been expecting having read the lyrics in The Moor up till then on its head.

 

[SculptedCold]

'Melinda reflected in shafts'

This is extremely difficult. The surrounding context doesn't give any indication of what this could be. It could be a literal reflection on shafts of some kind (the shafts of weaponry? part of the guillotine device?) or it could be be indicative of some sort of imagining going on in the mind of our persona. There's not really much to be drawn from here.

'Swathed in filth, any would betoken'

I think this is partly confusing because I believe Mikael has made some slight grammatical mistake by not concluding the meaning here. From the previous line 'Underneath with hope in laches' we know the line (or can presume) is referring to hope again. The word 'any' has no qualification in the line by itself, so it must refer to hope necessarily from the previous line. Likely, our persona is swathed in filth, or the hope is (doesn't matter much..), and 'any would betoken' is basically 'any hope would portent to....' but the line finishes on the word betoken. No sense can be derived from this as the following line 'Starlit shadows on the wall' almost certainly is literal and doesn't follow from the previous one you're querying about. So....as far as I can tell, the inconclusiveness of this line is just an error on Mikael's part.

'My next of kin'

ie 'Soil to skin, my next of kin' The directness of this line clearly implies that our persona considers his only remaining family or relation to be the ground/earth. So, once he is gone, everything to do with him is erased from existence. A lonely and fitting end.

'Murmer through the crowd/Plunging into anywhere but here'

First line is literal I think. The noose is tightened, and the murmer in the crowd is an expression of the tension, the expectation. 'Plunging into anywhere but here' is very ambiguous. If its in regards to the 'murmer', then it would imply that the murmering saturates into every part of the scene, but is not noticed or does not concern our persona. IE it doesn't plunge into him himself. This is kinda paradoxical though because the narrative acknowledges it.....though it may be to mean he doesn't want to hear the murmering but can't help to. Alternatively, the line may be taken disassociatively from the murmer one and merely indicate that he doesn't wish to fall into the hole/through the trapdoor device of the hanging platform. Could be either, other meanings would be even more vague and unsupportable.


and with regards to the faith thing, take it whichever way you like, both come to mean similar things. =)

 

[Midwinter_melancholY]

SculptedCold, I'd like to thank you very much for your explanation and assistence with those parts. I expected a bit of support but I didn't expect a whole analysis.

I am very grateful for your help with understanding the storyline and I won't forget this!

Thanks!

Martin

 

[Demilich]

I read somewhere that "Melinda reflected in shafts" meant that the main character saw her through the trees, followed by "Red line 'round her neck, met the earth in silence" which i presumed to mean she had been hanged and was dead. This is how I've always seen it, and I like it this way. I find it to be one of the most powerful lyrical verses ever written. The imagery, to me, is amazing.. i can see the scene unfold in my head... *bliss*

 

[SculptedCold]

hehe, no problem MM, just something I enjoy doing, and don't just take my word for it, everyone has their own interpretations. That's part of the fun! ;o)

Ahhh, that's a good way of reading it IAmEternal. Its a bit odd that, if seen through trees, she's said to be 'reflected'....but whatever! I've always been of the view that Melinda was decapitated with a guillotine, but of course, hanging is far more sensible! haha, nice.

urm, my favourite lyric from Still Life is;

Endlessly gazing in nocturnal prime
She spoke of her vices and broke the rhyme
But baffled herself with the final line
My promise is made but my heart is thine.

From a pinickerty literary point of view, the stanza is extremely messy with bad metre and random feet, but still, it doesn't take away the effect of the words themselves, which I love!

 

[AbsentFriend]

great to read this!

 

[scorpian007]

Thanks for the analysis SculptedCold

 

[suislidE]

no no, you guys got the reflected in shafts part wrong

Ripped from my embrace
Melinda reflected in shafts
Red line round her neck
Met the earth in silence
White faced, haggard grin
This serenity painted death

Reading that section, the main character was with Melinda at the time. Apparently a group of people grabbed Melinda(ripped from my embrace) and slit her throat(red line round her neck). The reflected in shafts part basically means the way she looked when they grabbed her if you guys can picture that.. she obviously didnt know what was happening, but she knew it wasnt good so there you go. Met the earth in silence means the look of the bystanders when this happened. Thats my interpretation of it btw.

 

[Judas Pissed]

Just a quick, possibly unimportant note..."fifteen alike since i was here" - doesn't that mean he was 15 when he was last there? as opposed to 15 years ago...i'm not certain though.

 

[Demoke]

Judas Pissed, I'm afraid you're wrong. The use of "since" in "Fifteen alike since I was here" implies a link from a time in the past until a later past time. This time extension is "15 summers" ("the sight of summer upon my return") and the word "summer" doesn't mean only the summer season, but the whole year.
On the other hand, can you really be expelled from a religious community so early in life???
More obviously, I suppose Melinda is a very mature woman, not to say a bit old ("She is waterdrops over the pyre / a thistle in my hands / STAINED AND TORN, AGED AND BROWN...). It would be very nice of someone if you're so strongly in love so early in life that you still come back after a very long time for your old love.
I suppose Melinda must be around 40 or 45 years old at the very least... and I stop writing because I'm getting crazy...

 

[Demoke]

In the "ripped-from-my-embrace-/-Melinda-reflected-in-shafts" I agree to some extent with suislidE. In Face of Melinda the two lovers have spent some time together in secret; then some "voices" come, which implies a group of people, people who take Melinda from the main character. Implying that Mikael uses literary language (this is obvious), and that he uses the word "reflected," then the meaning of "shafts" must be a kind of narrow beams of light, from which we can imply, that the "shafts" came with the "voices" or, in other words: the people taking Melinda, forming part of this religious group, have torches with them giving this dim light and from this light the main character could see her. It must have been in the dark where they were found!!

 

[ChrisEmerson]

i read 'the sigh of summer upon my return' as its the last summer has to give ie. its the end of summer.



but maybe not.



and its definately 15 years ago, not since he was 15.

 

[Midwinter_melancholY]

Finally the legend of 'who is Melinda' is bit by bit unfolding



Thanks for the interesting additions!

 

[Demoke]

You're welcome!

 

[rhdrums]

I always thought the part about met the earth in silence was referring to melinda being dead before she hit the ground, and reinforces that her death was likely by the slitting of her throat (unable to make a sound)
then continuing onto white face, haggard grin (he looks down at her) this serenity painted death (melinda = happiness to him, but is now dead)

I think it's being fairly literal in that verse

 

[Scourge of Amalek]

...met the earth in silence...
I always thought that the main character (our "Jonah") strangled Melinda, and that she was, as someone said before, dead before she hit the ground. The "Ripped from my embrace" part always seemed like it was his "pissed side" stealing Melinda's life from his "other side." I always took the main character as being kind of a double sided guy. The "shafts" lyrics didn't ever make ANY sense to me.

I see now that my notions are wrong.

 

[Demoke]

I think as a whole that the lyrics in Still Life are rather literal, but those words he uses make me imagine the scene very vividly...

I think the "white faced, haggard grin" is the gesture that Melinda has got on her face. On the one hand, "white" because of the "red line round her neck," and on the other, "haggard grin" a mix of exhausted and happy. The red line is the one killing her, red for blood and line for the slit. But from that time, there must be one stretch of time (it could only be a second, right before she dies) when she can give him this final stare... the serenity they have just enjoyed (in the previous track) has become (painted, tainted with blood-red) death, and it is because of perhaps infidelity to the man she was now with that this community has killed her. Still she is happy to have met her lover once again.
This black paragon (another reference to Melinda, black -she had blackened hair and dark skin-, and paragon -as a model of perfection- --hey, guys, black can be also good!) has got this last second between life and death... then our man character sees her fading, dying, face losing a living expression, which makes him really angry (clenched fist from the beautiful -Melinda is indeed beautiful- pain)... After this we have a part in the song showing by means of the music this rage and anger... In my opinion Serenity Painted Death is one of Opeth's peaks, as well as face of Melinda and Still Life as a whole!

 

[Slynt]

"Melinda reflected in shafts
Red line round her neck
Met the earth in silence"

I agree that Melinda is dead before she hits the ground. My take on her being reflected in shafts, is that we see her face in the shining blades of those who slit her throat.

By the way, doesn't Mikael sound hellfuckingishly cool when he growls, "reflected in shafts..." ?!?!

rock on. with or without the penis.

 

[Demoke]

Yes, Metalmaster! Your view does fit, too. And, yes, the devilish growl in the word "shafts" supports your point... It could also be torches, as I see it. by the way, how many blades have they got or do they use? More than one?

Another point here is the speed at which the events take place shown in the language by means of juxtaposition and not full sentences... it's no doubt a fucking great song!