I Know It's Over by Steven Patrick

I Know It's Over by Steven Patrick

Summary

This is a bleak, perhaps morbid, but sensitive and intelligent song

lyric, which most critics see as being about the end of fictional or

fantasy relationship. But the interpretation can be much deeper,

indeed, a bottomless pit for those who are inclined to wallow in

helplessness and suicidal thoughts. There are four distinct sections

that are not entirely connected and this leads to a variety of

interpretations in linking them, enabling the audience to project

their own feelings onto the words. And yet, the emotional intensity

seems to produce elation[1] not depression (perhaps more in the

performance than the poetry). Speculation about the meaning of the

lines (as long as it is not overdone) can lead to a satisfying

enjoyment.

Structure

The first section describes our hero's immediate state of mind with

the image of his empty bed as a grave:

Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head

and as I climb into an empty bed

Oh, well. Enough said.

As if being buried alive, the melancholy protagonist feels that his

life may as well be over: I know it's over - still I cling/I don't

know where else I can go. Perhaps an intense relationship has come to

an end, leading to thoughts of despair and suicide, but it may be less

obvious. He equates his imagined forthcoming death with a feeling of

utter helplessness, but it seems that death is not an option because

he finds it difficult to act, as we shall see. So, although the sea

wants to take me/the knife wants to slit me, he does not seem to want

it. He does ask do you think you can help me? but of whom? His mothe...

... middle of paper ...

...tates that love is

Natural and Real: is he afraid that for such as you and I, my love it

is unnatural and imaginary?

Themes

Typically for this writer the themes are unrequited love, isolation,

loneliness, helplessness, etc. The Wildean themes are, perhaps, in the

mind of the reader/listener. Indeed, the overall vagueness and

ambiguity, typical of this author, together with the complexity of the

structure allows for a dichotomy of interpretations.

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[1] However, I acknowledge David Pinching, writing in his essay Oscar

Wilde's influence on Stephen Fry and Morrissey, when he says that

"Wilde represents isolation within one's own world and a grand set of

theories about the most irrelevant and absurd things."

[2] All italics original