FST lyrics

[petronia]

For own use when posting to comm. I'll translate the Japanese... at some point. :P

The Cure - More Than This
Thematic longing. Fair warning: I'm not going to be able to write individually informative commentary on these songs. But string the lyrics together end-to-end and you'll get something that feels like reading the 30% of these novels comprised of Naoe's (and to a lesser extent Takaya's) obsessive death-spiral internal monologuery, i.e. rather like sticking your head out over an unlit staircase that winds around the inside of a tower - except there's no bottom to the shaft and it just goes down, like, forever. ...Or that's the intent, anyhow.

For a second of your life
Tell me that it's true
Waiting for a sign
It's all I want of you
Your heart hides a secret
"the promise of what is"

...or something more than this?

Just a second of your time
Any one will do
The taste of any 'other'
Is all I want from you
Offer me the world
And how can I resist
Something more than this?

Make-believe in magic
Make-believe in dreams
Make-believe in possible
Nothing as it seems
To see touch taste smell hear
But never know if it's real...

For a second of your life
Tell me if it's true
Anywhere beyond
It's all I want of you
On your lips lies a secret
"the promise of a kiss"

...or something more than this?

Just a second of your time
Any one will do
To know of any 'other'
Is all I want from you
Giving me the world
Know I can't resist
Something more than this

Make-believe in magic
Make-believe in dreams
Make-believe in possible
Nothings as it seems
And never really understand
What anything means...

Another second of my life
Not knowing if it's true
Make-believe in nothing
It's all I want of you
Whisper me the secret
Whisper me...

"there is always something other...
Something more than this"

***

David Usher - Black Black Heart
Four hundred years of frustration would drive anyone up the wall. Kagetora needs Naoe - no one else is really capable of providing the comfort and protection he craves - but need is weakness, with which he deals badly. So he withholds from Naoe until Naoe starts to slide into madness, and exhaustion of the soul.

I had three different versions of this song all named sort of the same. Drove me nuts trying to figure out why it would time differently every time I resequenced.

Something ugly this way comes
Through my fingers sliding inside
All these blessings all these burns
I'm godless underneath your cover
Search for pleasure search for pain
In this world now I am undying
I unfurl my flag my nation helpless

Black black heart
Why would you offer more
Why would you make it easier on me to satisfy
I'm on fire I'm rotting to the core
I'm eating all your kings and queens
All your sex and your diamonds

As I begin to lose my grip
On these realities you're sending
Taste your mind and taste your sex
I'm naked underneath your cover
Covers lie and we will blend and borrow
With the coming sign
The tide will take the sea will rise and time will rape

Black black heart
Why would you offer more
Why would you make it easier on me to satisfy
I'm on fire I'm rotting to the core
I'm eating all your kings and queens
All your sex and your diamonds

***

The Notwist - Pick Up The Phone
Mirage's cosmology/magic system is Buddhist, which colours the thematics of the series as a whole. The physical reality of the characters is that they're tied to earth with a mission to accomplish, when they should be - and probably would be happier - dead and passed on to their next existence. Only slightly less literally, Naoe and Kagetora's suffering derives from their inability to renounce their attachment to the world. For 'the world', read 'each other'.

You know this place
You know this gloom?
We've been here before

When life is a loop
You're in a room
Without a door
Trouble that we've come to know
Will stay with us
With every step it slowly grows
Rub off the rust

Pick up the phone and answer me at last
Today I will step out of your past

***

New Order - Vicious Streak
It's not a FST without a New Order song on. 'Saiai no anata e' (anime episode 7 or thereabouts), Naoe losing it due to sheer unadvised physical proximity. "You've got a vicious streak / for someone so young": Takaya is beginning to recover not only Kagetora's singular memories, but his behaviour patterns as well, i.e. lording it over the Yashashuu like a dictatorship of one man over three. Haruie is a willing and starry-eyed follower; Nagahide conceives of Kagetora less as a liege-lord than as a shounen-manga rival. The only one who truly rebels is Naoe.

What am I gonna do
I feel like I'm on fire
If you only knew
That you're the object of desire

I keep hanging on, keep hanging on
And I swear by God that you're the only one
I keep hanging on, keep hanging on
And I swear by God that it won't be long

My aim is true
My vision is clear
My thoughts are crude
Whenever you're near

I keep hanging on, keep hanging on
And I swear by God that you're the only one
I keep hanging on, keep hanging on
And I swear by God that it won't be long

I keep hanging on

You've got a vicious streak
For someone so young
You're like a solar flare
In the rising sun

***

Natalie Imbruglia - Identify
Identity issues. Takaya spends a good chunk of time jealous of Kagetora's hold on Naoe, even as he grows into his former self. Which is paradoxical at first glance. But Takaya is Kagetora's vulnerability turned inside out: he's used to thinking of himself as a future-less adolescent delinquent, undeserving of Naoe's attention, affection or time. On the other hand he assumes it would be obvious why Naoe loves Kagetora, as his former self appears to be perfect or at least peerless. But as he becomes Kagetora he doesn't find the answer waiting for him. Kagetora never knew; Kagetora always lived in fear of the inevitable loss.

(Not to mention Kagetora was the victim of a particularly brutal rape in his teens, which explains a lot about him without necessarily condoning it.)

Your eyes, they send me to eternity
Your heart may cast me down to Hell
I'm down
But lately it's your love that's condemnation enough

Identify
Please identify if it's me you want standing by your side
Identify these tears of mine
Am I lonely or am I just alive?

I let time decide who and what would stand its test of love
Your hands were speaking. No?
I felt the movement go
The ice was breaking, so
I wonder why did I identify with you, my love?
To leave me empty and see if I'd survive?

For every questioned hour, for every second devoured
you let me wander you into a myth that I misidentify
Please identify if it's me you want standing by your side
Identify these tears of mine
Am I lonely or am I just alive?

***

Cocco - 雲路の果て
insaneneko says Cocco has a 'sudden and strange brutality' to her songs, which is absolutely true. Naoe again: the poesy of suffering. If only I had never been given this life, never had the chance to know you.

(At other times he says this like it's the best thing that ever happened to him.)

My personal association with this song is when he's wandering around Nara, remembering what it was like to live with the knowledge that Kagetora may be lost to him forever.

ちぎれた空の波間から
こぼれさす光の道しるべ

近づいていく静寂に
やわらいだ縁どりが燃えてる

昔 見た聖書のページを
想い出すと あなたが笑った

この目さえ
光を知らなければ
見なくていいものがあったよ
からだが
あなたを知らなければ
引きずる思い出もなかった

六弦を奏でる指は
私だけ守るには幼く

くちづけは花びらに埋もれ
砂を噛むようにベルが鳴る

踊り子は悲しみを纏い
つぶれた足 舐めては歌った

この目さえ
光を知らなければ
見なくていいものがあったよ
からだが
あなたを知らなければ
引きずる思い出もなかった

ひかり舞う届かない海で
あふれる夜にあなたが見えるよ

小鳥が
声を殺していれば
あの時 翼が折れてたら
あなたが
わたしを抱いていたら
今でも溶けあっていられた？

この目さえ
光を知らなければ
見なくていいものがあったよ
からだが
あなたを知らなければ
引きずる思い出もなかった

***

Depeche Mode - It's No Good
Kagetora does know how to keep Naoe, though. He's had four hundred years to refine practice to art and make himself into an insurmountable challenge. Naoe doesn't want to be Kagetora's subordinate, but he is by nature: no matter for the sake of love or hate, he doesn't have it in him to disobey Kagetora's order or truly contravene his will. Remains only to remind him of it at every opportunity.

I'm going to take my time
I have all the time in the world
To make you mine
It is written in the stars above
The gods decree
You'll be right here by my side
Right next to me
You can run but you cannot hide

Don't say you want me
Don't say you need me
Don't say you love me
It's understood
Don't say you're happy
Out there without me
I know you can't be
'Cause it's no good

I'll be fine
I'll be waiting patiently
Till you see the signs
And come running to my open arms
When will you realize
Do we have to wait till our worlds collide
Open up your eyes
You can't turn back the tide

Don't say you want me
Don't say you need me
Don't say you love me
It's understood
Don't say you're happy
Out there without me
I know you can't be
'Cause it's no good

***

Poe - Wild
I'll let Poe take this one. I love this song, much like the rest of the album, but it's an exhausting listen. Naoe doesn't just stand and take it, he gets in his own low blows. The lyrics to this song are every single conversation gambit he uses on Takaya (apart from the one wherein he starts telling Takaya about his pornographic fantasies just to piss him off) from book 8 to... well, I'm on book 11 and it's not getting any prettier.

Communication is certainly not just words. Especially between two people who have that problem whereby what comes out of their mouths mysteriously bears no resemblance to what they're thinking in their heads.

I go wild 'cause you break me open
Wild 'cause you left me here
I go wild
'Cause your promises are broken

Wild because the chips are down
Wild because there isn't anybody else around
Wild when the waves start to break
And God knows they're breaking in me now

I go wild 'cause it doesn't make sense
For me to cry out in my own defense
Wild 'cause I would do anything
To tear you off your precious fence

So this is what it's like living in limbo
First I'm high then I'm so low

I go wild
'Cause you break me open
Wild
'Cause you left me here
I go wild
'Cause your promises are broken
Wild
When I know you're near
I go wild
I go wild

Tell me what you've come for
Moving like a hunter through my back door
Leaving the perfume of all you adore
To die nameless on my floor

Yeah well we both know you don't play fair
I guess you really think that you'll get me there
Let's be honest perhaps this little ride
Is too much for even you to bear

You've got some nerve to come back here
You're not the only one who can smell fear

I go wild
'Cause you break me open
Wild
'Cause you left me here
I go wild
'Cause your promises are broken
Wild
Don't you get it dear
You're not the only one who runs on instincts
No I've got instincts of my own

You've got a lot of nerve to come back
Plan your attack yeah I am still waiting
You wrote the rules to try to contain me
You broke 'em
Now you have untamed me
I go wild
I go wild

Tell me what you've come for
What is it you adore
Won't you tell me?
What would you cry for
Swallow all your pride for
What would you
Go wild for?

You've got a lot of nerve to come back here
Speak up my darling I have been waiting

***

A Perfect Circle - Blue
Kagetora - and Naoe, and Minako - thirty years ago. Minako was Kagetora's lover, a woman with whom he found a measure of peace in wartime; comfort he couldn't and wouldn't take from Naoe, because he would rather not face up to the emotional tangle between them.

It all ends spectacularly badly. And that's without taking Oda Nobunaga's contribution into account.

I didn't want to know
I just didn't want to know
Best to keep things in the shallow end
Cause I never quite learned how to swim

I just didn't want to know
Didn't want, didn't want
Didn't want, didn't want

Close my eyes just to look at you
Taken by the seamless vision
I close my eyes
Ignore the smoke
Ignore the smoke

Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
Such a lovely color for you
Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
While I just sit and stare at you

Because I don't want to know
I didn't want to know
I just didn't want to know
I just didn't want

Mistook their nods for an approval
Just ignore the smoke and smile

Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
Such a lovely color for you
Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
Such a perfect color for your eyes
Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
Such a lovely color for you
Call it aftermath, she's turning blue
While I just sit and stare at you

I don't want to know

***

Cocco - けもの道
Much of the struggle in the novels is not so much between Naoe and Kagetora as it is between Naoe's superego and his id - which he conceptualises as bestial. To quote Chiaki, he wants twice as much as the next person, and is twice as repressed to make up for it.

Rapunzel is a schizophrenic album, and this song honestly scares the dickens out of me. ^^;

手を伸ばせば
その髪に
爪を磨けば
届きそう

ねじるように
捕まえて
飛び散るまで
目をあけて

誰かわかる？
わかるでしょう？

辿り着けばきっと
見せてあげるわ
最後まで瞬く
悪い夢
抉じ開けた唇
溢れるぐらい
垂れ流した愛を
詰め込んで

嘘には罰を
月には牙を
あなたに報いを

割れた夜に
カマイタチ
りんごの木に
詩を彫る

むせるような
けもの道
終わりのない
迷い道

震えるでしょう？
苦しいでしょう？

息を削りながら
さぁ 逃げなさい
闇が続く限り
もがく星
この脚を伝って
縺れた記憶

溺れるほど赤い
吹きだまり

傷には雨を
花には毒を
わたしに刃を

嘘には罰を
月には牙を
あなたに報いを

***

Vixtrola - Gunboat
Kagetora again. As proved more than once in the series, amnesia is never the answer. (No, I'm serious.) Nor is denial an effective coping mechanism, but the characters test it thoroughly nevertheless. The subtext of grace is that you do have to be lost before you can be found.

I've been crossed
Like a river between you and I
Now I am wondering why
I can't remember your name
I can't remember

I've been waiting
I've been holding out
If you think you have the slightest chance of swallowing me
You should have your doubts

And it's hard with your head in the ground
What is lost
What is lost may not ever be found
I can't remember your face
I can't remember

I've been waiting
I've been holding out
If you think you have the slightest chance of swallowing me
You should have your doubts

When everything that you've been wanting
Is so much more than you could give
The pressure from the strain is fronting
The battle of the wills you live

I've been waiting
I've been holding out
If you think you have the slightest chance of swallowing me
You should have your doubts

I've been waiting
I've been holding out
I'm doubting you could take me down

***

The Tea Party - The Messenger
Usage of this song not nearly as metaphorical as Daniel Lanois intended when he wrote the lyrics. Naoe does eventually... win, I guess, for a given value of win. Then he figures the game for a sham.

Got a letter from a messenger
I read it when it came
It said that you were wounded
You were bound and chained
You had love and you were handled
You were poisoned you were pained
Oh no, oh no
You were naked
You were shamed

You could almost touch heaven
Right there in front of you
Liberty just slipped away on us
Now there's so much work to do
O the door that closes tightly
Is the door that can swing wide
Oh no, oh no
Not expecting to collide

For a minute I let my guard down
Not afraid to be found out
Completely forgot dear
What our fears were all about
Oh no, oh no
There's no need to be without

If there's a chance I would take it
This desire I can't kill
Take my heart please don't break it
I will crawl to your foothill

I'm frightened but I'm coming
Please baby please lay still
Oh no, oh no
I'm not coming for the kill

***

Depeche Mode - Judas
One of those 'album tracks' you never get to hear unless you decide to sit down and listen to the CD from beginning to end. Depeche Mode doesn't usually deal in tender bedroom-headphones balladry. In fact the first few bars sound rather like the Pet Shop Boys circa Behaviour; but then the melody does - whatever it does, minor seventh chord whotheheck knows - on "So walk on barefoot for me / suffer some misery / if you want my love", and it couldn't be any other band.

Not to mention, what other band would write a tender bedroom-headphones ballad with lyrics like that.

(Yes, Mirage of Blaze beats the reader over the head with perverse homoerotic Japanese filtering of High Catholic metaphor. You were expecting not, maybe?)

Is simplicity best
Or simply the easiest?
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
So walk on barefoot for me
Suffer some misery
If you want my love

Man will survive
The harshest conditions
And stay alive
Through difficult decisions
So make up your mind for me
Walk the line for me
If you want my love

Idle talk
And hollow promises
Cheating Judases
Doubting Thomases
Don't just stand there and shout it
Do something about it

You can fulfil
Your wildest ambitions
And I'm sure you will
Lose your inhibitions
So open yourself for me
Risk your health for me
If you want my love

***

Sweetback featuring Aya - Lover
It is romantic. (Sometimes.) They do get together. (Eventually.)

Don't know where you are
How near or how far
You're willing to go
It's time for the show
Did you learn your part
My favorite part
Is when you're my lover

Don't know where to go
Production is slow
The life of a star
Contained in a jar
If I lay my head
Down on your knee
Pretend I'm your lover

So many things
I want you to think
Think about me
Things you don't see
Things we take away
Baby look at my face
No one can lie like a lover

If I turn away
Baby look at my face
No one can lie like a lover

All of my lies
Is all that I've got
Nothing takes me higher
Touching the sun
Is all that I want
No one takes me higher

If there's a way
Out of this maze
Hand me the key
Your eyes set me free
Touching the sun
All that I want
Is to be your lover

To be your lover

***

Utada Hikaru - Deep River
It's a commonplace of this series that Naoe and Kagetora are most honest when they believe they've lost each other, or when they're fighting just to survive. Then one is invited to give a proper bit of thought what is barely imaginable: time ever-flowing, form ever-mutable, the only constant a thread that binds two souls together.

The lyrics to this song are the apogee of Utada Hikaru's songwriting as far as I'm concerned.

点と点を繋ぐように
線を描く指がなぞるのは
私の来た道
それとも行き先？

線と線を結ぶ二人
やがてみんな海にたどり着き
一つになるから
怖くないけれど

いくつもの川を流れ
わけも聴かずに
与えられた名前とともに
すべてを受け入れるなんて

しなくていいよ
私たちの痛みが今
飛び立った
（That's why, that's why I chose you)

剣と剣がぶつかり合う音を
知るために託された剣じゃないよ
そんな矛盾で
だれを守れるの？

何度も姿を変えて
私の前に
舞い降りたあなたを今日は
探してる
どこでも受け入れられようと
しないでいいよ
自分らしさという剣(ツルギ）をみんな
授かった

時には流れを変えて
与えられた名前とともに
すべてを受け入れるなんて
しなくていいよ
潮風に向かい鳥たちが今
飛び立った

***

Laura Burhenn - Memory
...And end. Or ever after. I wrote an essay on MSN once re how in my view the series ends with a gesture of grand Romantic - capital not small r - affirmation, that places an intrinsic value on what in the worldview of the series (let alone that of the readers) should be no more than illusion and suffering. But I can't reproduce it, so here's a song instead.

You creep up to me like a long forgotten dream
I explore your existence in my memory
We are all that is around us, I am all I've ever seen
And if you were ever really here you must be somewhere inside me

I search myself for a still frame of your smile
And although I can't touch it I know you were here for awhile

The very thought of you is haunting, the memory of your kiss
The way it can taste like leaves falling in the autumn
To a symphony of fireflies and crickets
And when the sun hangs on the horizon, resting in the tops of the golden trees
I will wait for you to slip into the night when the boughs break

I can't bear the weight of you in my dreams
A being complete with no means to be
And with every sigh of laughter I smell you on my breath
The feel of your movements in every step

Memory is the only afterlife, I'm certain, and I am a living legacy
'Cause you are nestled in my brain next to the circuits
That move my hands and my mouth and my legs
And when I touch myself I'm sure that you are touching me
'Cause in my mind you are still moving

And in me you breathe

Comments

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the lyrics! I had gone on a lyrics search but couldn't find two of them...

Most of the songs seem really tied to Naoe's POV in the worst way, but the last couple kind of confused me as to what the intent was. It seemed to shift focus but I couldn't follow where you were going. Overall, though, great selection. The lyrics are so wickedly perfect!

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

Having read the lyrics for Memory (that woman does not sing clearly, I had no idea what she was singing...), this so feels like the "ever after" portion of their relationship. Now it feels like the vast majority of this FST is Naoe suffering his unrequited love for Kagetora, and Kagetora responds in Judas, they get together in Lover, Deep River is about the two of them, and Memory is, like I just said, the "ever after" part...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ah, yup, that's pretty much it. XD (There's a bunch of Kagetora songs but not as many as Naoe songs, paralleling the fact that Naoe seems to... monologue a lot more.) I think I ran out of canon knowledge at about the same time as I ran out of CD space. Nevertheless I needed the shift, as I think the overall narrative point of the series is not unalloyed gloom. ^^;

Glad you liked it, anyhow!

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

Which ones are the Kagetora songs and which ones are the Naoe ones?

I really like this FST...I've been listening to it a lot these past several days. ^_^ Thanks again.

[two-if-by-sea.livejournal.com]

You know, just today, "The Messenger" came on during shuffle, and it struck me that goddamnit, Sabina, every time I hear this song I think about Naoe.

Every time.