Released on January 20, 1998

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[Verse 1]

In separate sections the bodies fall

The leaves are purple, the grass is red

I love your music, I love your style

The light inside you feeds through your eyes


[Bridge]

Na na na na


[Verse 2]

The golden liquid that washed your face

Contain my secrets and bitter taste

I love your music, I love your throat

The light inside me feeds like a golden rope


[Bridge]

Na na na na


[Refrain]

And I alone

See through your eyes

And I alone

Will never die

And I alone

Can taste your hand

And I alone

Am sanctified

And I alone

Can smell your hair

And I alone

Feed you the air

And I alone

Control your breath

And I alone

Prevent your death

And I alone

Am not alone

And I alone

Am not alone...

Na na na na na...

It's the sun

It's the sun

Sh-sh-shining

Sh-sh-shining...

Shhhh....

Shhhh....


[Instrumental]

“I love your music, I love your style The light inside you feeds through your eyes”
👍 6
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One of the victims of the air crash is the fictional music star Angelica, described by the narrator as his “Goddess” (“I love your music, I love your style”), whose body the narrator finds intact away from the rest of the crash sight. From “MTV And The Cult Of The Body”:

Finally, as it becomes obvious to me that the others are hypnotized by the monotony of their work, I’m able to wander off beyond the perimeter without being noticed. Inside my mind, I’m tuned to an invisible psychic thread, and it leads me steadily through the clinging and impenetrable fabric of sweating vegetation. I follow this sensation with a joy that glows like an ember in my loins, leading me on to the holy body of my Goddess, who’s waiting just for me, resting from her fall. It’s inconceivable to me that she would allow her perfectly sculpted, athletic body to fall among the common heap of the other passengers – even if mutilated by the violence of the explosion. So I’m not surprised when I find her lying peacefully in a bed of thistles and moss, perfectly intact, naked… The face I’ve seen so many times, bathed in the nacreous light of stardom on MTV, looks exact as it has always appeared in her videos – flawlessly white, seductive, as forgiving and maternal as the Mother of God, and wise, as only the most famous media stars can be, in the secrets of transcendent sexual agony and bliss. Her eyes are fluorescent green, sparkling with yellow chips, like the eyes of a leopard, the ultra-modern, contact-lens gloss, no more or less opaque and inscrutable in death than in her most recent video…

“In separate sections the bodies fall The leaves are purple, the grass is red”
👍 10
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As mentioned by Gira in a newsletter, this song is heavily based on his own short story “MTV And The Cult Of The Body,” which in turn was inspired by the art piece Étant donnés by Marcel Duchamp (NSFW).

“MTV And The Cult Of The Body” begins by describing the violent aftermath of an airplane crash from the perspective of one member of the emergency crew, which has been assigned to clean up the debris and the viscera/scattered body parts of the now-deceased passengers (“In separate sections the bodies fall”):

Shredded and scattered by the explosion, their bodies hang in limp strips from the trees like deliquescing over-ripe fruit. Skewered on a thorny branch, a child’s hand points an accusing finger at the sky, drawing our eyes up to the exact location in the blue where the mayhem was born – an erupting orchid of flames that blasted through the delicate parchment of the air and showered the forest below with a lumbering rain of flesh, melting plastic, and steel.

“The leaves are purple, the grass is red” is describing the vegetation at the crash scene, stained with the blood of the victims:

Cutting our way through the brush, we’re the first members of the emergency crew to arrive. Brightly clad in our yellow rubber suits and matching air-filtered hoods, we work our way silently towards the garden of whispering gore, like an advancing troop of carnivorous aliens, drawn in by the scent of burning plastic and roasted organs.

…

The dew-slicked vivid greens of the grass and foliage now glow crimson instead, bleeding with the over-saturated pigments of a negative color film.

“The golden liquid that washed your face Contain my secrets and bitter taste I love your music, I love your throat The light inside me feeds like a golden rope”
👍 5
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He’s pissing on her