A rhythmic beat among the stars.
So, the other night, V and I are eating dinner in a casual family restaurant, and Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer comes on over the radio.
V grins at me flirtatiously, and drawls, "Hey...I wanna be your sledgehammer."
Surprised, and puzzled, I stage whisper my response: "But...this isn't a song about sex."
He laughs, and eyerolls, "Psh. Of course it is. Listen to it."
So, I cock my head and listen for a few moments, to the lyrics that I had previously thought that I'd always known...or thought I'd known enough to sing along to a least a thousand times since 1986.
And I realize that I've never thought of the song that way. Hell, I've sung along with the lyrics, and watched the ground-breaking stream of consciousness effect of the video (rollercoasters, fruit mosaics, dancing chickens, a bass line that beats among stars?!) many many times...and yet, never once had I thought Sledgehammer could be about....sex. A sex act.
So then I started thinking about the lyrics, and the sexual metaphors that could be inherent in this:
show me round your fruitcage
'cos I will be your honey bee
open up your fruitcage
where the fruit is as sweet as can be
OK ...maybe this.
And it dawns on me that maybe that this was why Peter Gabriel drops exhaustedly into the easy chair at the end.
(And here I had thought that Peter Gabriel was tired because of all that singing and dancing.)
V was quite amused at my slow dawning to that possibility that that universal rhythmic beat among the stars is some poetic post-effect of.... an orgasm.
~~~
As well as V was ever more amused by this odd reversal; usually I'm the one who has a mind in the gutter.
As it usually is, as Oscar Wilde remarked:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
V grins at me flirtatiously, and drawls, "Hey...I wanna be your sledgehammer."
Surprised, and puzzled, I stage whisper my response: "But...this isn't a song about sex."
He laughs, and eyerolls, "Psh. Of course it is. Listen to it."
So, I cock my head and listen for a few moments, to the lyrics that I had previously thought that I'd always known...or thought I'd known enough to sing along to a least a thousand times since 1986.
And I realize that I've never thought of the song that way. Hell, I've sung along with the lyrics, and watched the ground-breaking stream of consciousness effect of the video (rollercoasters, fruit mosaics, dancing chickens, a bass line that beats among stars?!) many many times...and yet, never once had I thought Sledgehammer could be about....sex. A sex act.
So then I started thinking about the lyrics, and the sexual metaphors that could be inherent in this:
show me round your fruitcage
'cos I will be your honey bee
open up your fruitcage
where the fruit is as sweet as can be
OK ...maybe this.
And it dawns on me that maybe that this was why Peter Gabriel drops exhaustedly into the easy chair at the end.
(And here I had thought that Peter Gabriel was tired because of all that singing and dancing.)
V was quite amused at my slow dawning to that possibility that that universal rhythmic beat among the stars is some poetic post-effect of.... an orgasm.
~~~
As well as V was ever more amused by this odd reversal; usually I'm the one who has a mind in the gutter.
As it usually is, as Oscar Wilde remarked:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars