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This post brought to you by the Gethen Playlist
Mousie sent me "Sunday Morning, Yellow Sky". Also I have found several other songs that fit gorgeously into my playlist, all from October Project, which is made of epic win.
So now you have lyrcs and commentary. Anything in italics was added by me.
"The Mind's Eye" didn't seem to have lyrics online anywhere, so I transcribed. This is post-canon Genly -- significantly post-canon Genly, who in my mind has gone to Ollul, or at least to a nearish planet resembling Earth, to do follow-up reports and be studied firsthand.
[the song opens with Martin Luther King Jr. speaking]
"Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. (See the stars.)"
(Genly dreams -- perhaps of Sorve, as Therem, and trading gems as currency on Gethen...)
Today I woke hidden from the sun.
I heard a young man speaking, magic on his tongue.
Bound at the feet, taken by the wrist,
He reaches out to me, a diamond in his fist.
(Genly wakes on Hain, in an exam room where a nurse or psychologist or something has come in to continue questioning about his experiences on Gethen, and they ask him about his time with Therem, whether he had any firsthand experience with Gethenian sexuality...)
I hear my name repeating like a prayer
Within the chambers of the early morning air.
You speak of love, so innocent and clear
Invent an emptiness where I can disappear.
(Travel between great distances does strange things to time. Genly's parents had died 70 years before he met Therem, still in his 20's. Now back on the planet of Winter, Sorve would be the same age Therem was when he died, while Genly has barely aged.)
And time goes away,
And no one can see,
But in the mind's eye, the summer never ends.
The days go on and on until you sleep again.
(Genly thinks about the curiously free anonymity of kemmer-houses, contrasting with the laws controlling incest that allowed Sorve to be conceived between two brothers -- brothers whose love was doomed from their first kemmering together, who must have known it, and yet whose love remained the force that drove Therem to the action that freed his world to join the Ekumen.)
Strangers kissed, lovers could not part,
They could not see the ending coming from the start.
There were no signs, no changes in the air.
If there were better times, I can't imagine where.
But in the mind's eye, the summer never ends.
The days go on and on until you sleep again.
And time goes away
Where no one can see.
(Genly wakes as Therem had died -- Therem saying Arek's name, now Genly saying Therem's, and he understands more than ever the wild spirit that had gripped his friend and companion. There are no birds on Gethen. But Therem had understood the need to fly.)
Today I woke, his name upon my tongue.
I saw the birds above me leaving one by one.
A promise held too tightly always comes apart
Within the verses and reverses of the heart.
But in the mind's eye, the summer never ends.
The days go on and on until you sleep again.
And time goes away...
---
And then I found... this:
"Now I Lay Me Down"
(Therem makes a decision.)
Out of the silence,
Into the blue...
You finally remember where you've been,
You finally remember who you are,
And you remember the light.
("Light is the left hand of darkness...")
(And one last echo in his mind before the end -- the passion, the love, Arek...)
Out of the spirit,
Into the flesh,
The animal heartbeat in the chest,
The naked desire,
The appetite,
But you remember the light...
(Arek... The letter Arek had written before his death quoted that same poem...)
Now I lay me down,
Now I lay me down,
Now I lay me down to dream.
(As they flee Tibe's assassins in the winter night, closing on the border to Orgoreyn, Therem skiis away from Genly and into the gunfire of the border guards, sacrificing his life in order to strip Tibe of his power and ensure Genly's safty until the arrival of the Star Ship.)
Out of the fire,
Into the night,
Communion of body into smoke,
Human and sacred
The sacrifice --
You will remember the light.
("I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark.")
Now I lay me down,
Now I lay me down,
Now I lay me down to dream.
Now I lay me down
To dream of light,
To dream of light...
---
Yes. So. Owbreaky beautiful. One more. Therem on the ice, going into kemmer with Genly:
"Take Me As I Am"
(What really makes this song beautiful for this scene is the two different singers. Normal words here are the main singer, who is a woman with a fascinatingly androgynous voice -- sounds kind of like a woman trying to sing as a man. Words in parenthesis are a second, clearly female singer. They both have very rich voices and it's almost like a kind of duet with Therem the androgyne and Therem in kemmer as female -- both driven towards a connection with Genly, one driven by love, the other by lust. Words in brackets are both singing together. And of course italics are mine.)
Take me as I am
(Someone you don't know)
Even in the dark
(You may not be sure)
[Take me while you can]
I can see you standing in the smoky entrance
[Giving up your good intentions]
CHORUS
[Leave the shadows dancing,
Dancing on their own.
Let the moment free you now.
Leave it all behind you,
I'll know where you've gone.
Let the world go on.]
(Take me as I am)
I may disappear
(Fade into the night)
Lighther than your thoughts...
[Take me while you can]
Never knowing who or what you are until you're
[Living with the unfamiliar]
[Leave the shadows dancing,
Dancing on their own.
Let the moment free you now.
Leave it all behind you,
I'll know where you've gone.
Let the world go on.]
[There's a place where fear won't find you
Where your secret dreams remind you
This is all you have to know and
This is all you have to go on]
(The following verse is both singers, but the female echoing the other rather than harmonizing.)
[Everything you have inside you
Everything you need to guide you
This is all you have to know and
This is all you have to go on]
Take me as I am
(Someone you could know)
Even as we speak
(You could change your mind)
(...about being together; in the book, Therem and Genly decide it would be best not to let themselves be physically intimate, even though the love and desire is there for both.)
[Take me while you can
Even if you shine a light into a mirror
You won't see me any clearer.]
(I love those lines. They are exquisitely Therem, who is perpetually mysterious and paradoxical to Genly, and so in that sense untouchable.)
[Leave the shadows dancing,
Dancing on their own.
Let the moment free you now.
Leave it all behind you,
I'll know where you've gone.
Let the world go on.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And hey, guess what? There's a song for that same scene, that works for both Genly and Therem. They are so lovers in mutual denial. It's tragic, but entirely sensible.
"If I Turn Away"
If I turn away
From the shadow I see in your smile,
If I turn away
When you reach for my hand,
It’s only to keep you from seeing me
Turn away
From the echo of love in your eyes.
When I turn away
From the questions you ask,
It’s only to keep you from seeing
My love, my love
My love, my love.
I would want you beside me.
I would want you to stay.
I would want you--
But not this way.
If I turn away
From the promise of waking in your arms,
If I turn away
When you reach for my heart,
It’s only to keep you from seeing
My love, my love
My love, my love
I would want you beside me.
I would want you to stay.
I would want you--
But not this way.
If I turn away...
---
And hey, okay, yes, I really am done for tonight. Really.
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gethenian) wrote,
