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Live - Lightning Crashes Song Meanings
 Top Rated Interpretation
anonymous
May 2nd, 2007 03:31PM
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Ed Kowalczyk said, "I wrote 'Lightning Crashes' on an acoustic guitar in my brother's bedroom shortly before I had moved out of my parents' house and gotten my first place of my own." Kowalczyk says that the video for "Lightning Crashes" lends itself to many misinterpretations of the song's intent. "While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody's dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you're seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life. The dedication to Barbara Lewis came after the song was written. But it was something that we hoped would honor the memory of a girl we grew up with and help her family cope with sorrow -- which it seems to have accomplished -- in a fashion in keeping with the theme of the song."
In other words, this song is about the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The angel opens her eyes in birth, and closes them in death. The angel is both a symbol of the divine and of life, and the living people themselves (eyes opening for the first time in life, closing for the final time in death).
The pale blue-colored iris of a newborn baby represents the circle of life. The glory coming out to hide is the spark of the divine hidden within all people. It is there before us in plain sight, but hidden because we see the flesh most often rather than the spirit within.
It is not about the girl who died in the car accident, nor is it about abortion, miscarriage, etc. It is about the peaceful passing of a life (an old mother whose children are grown), and the joyful if hectic arrival of a new life (the new mother and her baby).
carls
July 10th, 2005 10:24PM
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I think this song is about the circle of life and death. In the first verse, it says 'an new mother cries/her placenta falls to the floor' which refers to childbirth. In the second verse, it says 'an old mother dies', refering very obviously to death, and the last line of this verse goes 'the confusion that was hers/belongs now to the baby down the hall'. What I take this to mean is that the band is literally talking about one hospital where you have a baby being born at the same time as a person dies, symbolising the very intimate relationship life and death share. And that the person dying no longer has to worry about the 'confusion' of life, while the baby is just about to enter this confusion.
Each verse begins with 'lightning crashes' which could mean several things. Either the same crash of lightning that sees new life also sees death, or that while all this life and death goes on, mother nature continues unknowingly.
anonymous
June 30th, 2006 07:18PM
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The song "Lightning Crashes" was originally written about the circle of life. Verses one, two, and three all describe three unrelated experiences of life and death. The sequence is life-death-life... The death in verse two appears to take place in the same hospital "down the hall" from the baby born in verse one. "The confusion" that was hers Belongs now to the baby down the hall. The reference to "confusion" describes the condition of life, that in birth, through life, and even until death we never fully understand what's going on. Live later adapted this song to fit the Oklahoma City bombings, including audio from the explosions. By far one of my favorite songs.
sowrecked
December 22nd, 2007 10:14AM
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My take on this track is that it's a story on human life. The baby being born enters and starts the journey as the old woman is completing her journey. A circle of life.
anonymous
February 28th, 2008 07:59AM
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After reading the other posts here I think the meaning is pretty obvious.
First verse: A mother gives birth to a child and cries 'cause she's so happy. "The angel opens her eyes" means the baby is opening it's eyes for the first time and therefor the baby gets confused right away, even before the doctor leaves the room.
Second verse: An old women dies in the same hospital as the child was born in. And when she dies she obviously doesn't have any worries anymore. But the baby down the hall is just born and is going to have loads of things to worry about later in life.
Thunder crashes obvously means that something sudden happens that strikes us like a thunder, like death.
The angel is there to give live and take life.
This is what I reckon after going through the lyrics but there's one thing in the video that bothers me. In the end of the video the baby lies alone in the bed and the angel is standing over it. Why is the baby alone in the bed? I don't get it.
That's why I always thought at first that the mother had died but I want to believe that she didn't.
anonymous
August 14th, 2008 05:21PM
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Ed Kowalczyk interview in spin From Spin Magazine: (Ed Kowalczyk) He smiles, exhales, and begins. "I wrote 'Lightning Crashes' on an acoustic guitar in my brother's bedroom shortly before I had moved out of my parents' house and gotten my first place of my own." Kowalczyk says that the video for "Lightning Crashes" lends itself to many misinterpretations of the song's intent. "While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody's dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you're seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life. The dedication to Barbara Lewis came after the song was written. But it was something that we hoped would honor the memory of a girl we grew up with and help her family cope with sorrow -- which it seems to have accomplished -- in a fashion in keeping with the theme of the song."
kirtanman
September 21st, 2008 08:31PM
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This song is about spiritual awakening. If you doubt this, do some Googling on Ed K. -- and yes, I know what he *said* - yogis and mystics have engaged in this kind of reporting "sleight of hand" as long as there have been yogis and mystics. The "old mother" dying, and her placenta falling to the floor are the release of illusory consciousness. The new mother is the awakening into realization (the mother is language and discursive thought; she binds us, until we get it [realize words and thoughts are within our own consciousness, and we are independent of them] -- and then, she liberates us; the old mother and new mother are actually the same.) The angel is the all-powerful, yet fully innocent baby of each new moment of perception (the same "baby" we cradle in space, in I Alone); Lightning Crashes is the flash of pure consciousness in each moment of perception, *before* it splits up into a sense of subject and object. I didn't get this either for a long time; then I meditated for a decade, learned Sanskrit, and realized. I also realized that our good friend Ed is putting the "circle out to hide" in *every single song*. LIVE can take you all the way Home (where the Heart is Given Up to the One -- from They Stood Up for Love). Do I have any idea what I'm talking about? "Yonivargah Kalasariram - The Mother's group of sources comprises the group of obscuring energies; Jnanadhistanam Matrka - The Mother is the place of knowledge." Matrka - the yoga of the symbolism of Sanskrit is the "yoga of the hidden Mother" (yes- The Mother from Freaks.) Aum Hrdayam! (AUM is Where the Heart Is!)
JasmineStar
August 11th, 2009 12:44PM
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This song was on the radio around the time my brother was in intensive care in hospital, and even though i had barely heard the lyrics it was a great comfort to me to listen to this song. i played the song over and over the night my brother passed on. It is a beautiful song for helping us release our grief to lose someone, and also to remember that they are now in a peaceful spirit place. The line that lifts me is "feel it coming back again, like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind", and that line seems to remind me that spirit is stronger than the death of the physical body, and it also lends me towards reincarnation.
anonymous
October 15th, 2009 06:59PM
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Reincarnation
anonymous
February 22nd, 2010 11:31PM
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I think that it is about Life and Death and the cycle, but a little more than that. When he mentions confusion when the baby is born I think he is talking about the unknowingness at the begining of life, and when the old mother dies and the confusion is given to the baby, its because the old mother has met a sense of peace and understanding at death.
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