Great thread, you guys. All of you, thank you. For this discussion, you may want to read along in your hymnal. The lyrics for "Electricity" are at: http://www.jmdl.com/lyrics/electricity.cfm
In "Electricity", Joni said, >> the song that he sang her to soothe her to sleep runs all through her circuits like a heartbeat >> I can't even convey what these lines mean to me today. They are incredibly moving but I can speak their meaning. Now that I read them in isolation, the text says something different from the emotion that the *sound* has always brought up. For me, in the context, she's looking back over a breakdown, a failure, and finding that it was profoundly valuable anyway. In fact, his voice is now her mantra, her heartbeat, even though it resulted in an overload, the potential danger of loose wires, and darkness. His lullaby is within her head. The context of the song (breakup) conveys shadows, a setting, for the text. She's expressing her confusion to a female expert on darkness, (a therapist most likely, eh?). It's not simple, but she's working the problem within a structured environment. I think she's taken a hejira to the country and is doing a post-mortem. She recalls the Light and Sound that was in her life but now it's the most troubling part. Why would you break up with someone who brought Light into your life? It's non-sensical. It's a paradox. How can one fix that? How can you break from your own "heartbeat"? Well, you can't fix it easily that's for sure. For me, I find these lines moving because she's filled with a mantra yet supremely disappointed. She's singing a bitter & sweet duality that is a huge part of my life. No one gets duality right like Joni. Lama, on day two of the headache from Hell (no offense to my esteemed colleague in NZ.)
