A Private Understanding Lyrics
Not by my own hand
Automatic writing by phantom limb
Not with my own voice
Pleurisy made to stand on two legs
That's how I bar my door
In this age of blasting trumpets
Paradise for fools
Infinite wrath
In the lowest deep a lower depth
I don't want to hear those vile trumpets anymore
Conscience wakes despair
The night is an accumulation of dark air
The scholar will be forever poor
Gross gold runs headlong to the boor
I don't want to hear those vile trumpets anymore
Call me "Heraclitus The Obscure"
Constantly weeping because the river doesn't move
It doesn't flow
It's been leaded by snider men to make a profit from the poor
I don't want to hear those vile trumpets anymore
[Chorus]
People live with a private understanding
Sorrow's the wind blowing through
Truth is hiding in the wire
Elvis outside of Flagstaff
Driving a camper van
Looking for meaning in a cloud mass
Sees the face of Joseph Stalin
And is disheartened
Then the wind changed the cloud into his smiling Lord
And he was affected profoundly
But he could never describe the feeling
He passed away on the bathroom floor
[Outro]
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
She's just trying to reach you
About
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
[Guitarist] Greg [Ahee] had given me a demo of this song at the very beginning of thinking about the next record. Even in that form it sounded like it could be the opening salvo and he was thinking the same thing. After that agreement, we put it aside and it cleared up my anxiety knowing that it was lurking in the background somewhere. Any little inspiration or dumb bit of line I came up with got thrown in there at some point. Pretty early on I had, ‘She’s just trying to reach you,’ but I didn’t know who ‘she’ was or what she was trying to say. I’m still not one hundred percent certain. I also knew I wanted to start the album with an apology or a warning that whatever followed was maybe not completely true. Those two ideas were all I had — the one line and feeling I needed to cover my ass.
Reading The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton was a big inspiration. It was heartening to read that a guy in the 1700s was wrestling with the sadness of living and the inequities of the world. ‘The more things change,’ and all that. It’s where I found out about Heraclitus, which gave me a roundabout way of singing about the Flint water crisis. I guess that part is about the unceasing wheel of tragedies and how the Flint story has receded from the headlines even though the man-made suffering remains. The Elvis story is from a biography by Peter Guralnick. Al Stewart also wrote a song about the same part in the book, which I didn’t know about until recently. I guess that proves it was the most interesting part.
–NPR
- 1.A Private Understanding
- 3.My Children
- 4.Caitriona
- 5.The Chuckler
- 6.Windsor Hum
- 8.Up the Tower
- 10.Male Plague
- 12.Half Sister