The Antlers: Shiva Meaning

Shiva Lyrics

Suddenly every machine stopped at once
And the monitors beeped the last time
Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds
And all of them empty but mine

Well, I was lying down with my feet in the air
Completely unable to move
The bed was misshaped,...

1. anonymous

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   Nov 18th 2013 !⃝

   When you look at the song within the context set by the rest of Hospice album, you indentify themes of doom, frustration, pain and dysfunctional relationship dynamics. For me Shiva is a harrowing revelation of just how strongly the terminal illness of a an emotionally abusive victim has bound her to her partner.
   
   Throught the album the victim's partner alternates between experiencing dispair that takes on a dream-like haze; wanting to desperately find a way to fix the situation; emploring his partner to let him in and recognise that he wants to be there and passively allowing his parter to use him as her emotional puching bag.
   
   The song Shiva works hand in hand with the last 2 songs in the album ( "Wake" and "Epilogue) to convey a state of awakening experienced by the victim's partner after the victim has lost her battle to her illness. In the song Shiva, the victim's partner realises that towards the end, the victim's illness had taken on binding properties and caused his and the victim's lives to become unnaturally intertwined.
   
   The victim's partner has endured the victim taking out her frustrations at her illness on him for so long, that the partner has made the victim's illness his own. He's seen the steady decline in her health and sanity, the dysfunctional relationship they had has alienated him from everbody else. The illness, the broken relationship, the dispair and the hope against all odds -all of it has become a fixed part of the partner's personality.
   
   It is though in the song, the partner wakes up and is reminded that not so long ago, the victim left ("Suddenly every machine stopped at once and the monitors beeped the last time"). He realises that he is still stuck in that same state of mind that he was in during the course of his relationship with the victim and during the course of the victim's illness. The concept of being motionless and still ("Well,I was lying down with my feet in the air, completely unable to move") is an allusion to the fact that progress has halted for the partner. The victim broke free of the mess when she "tore that old band off and left me your ring in my fist".
   
   The partner is stuck. The very person that for whom he allowed himself to live in misery for, is gone and he is suddenly forced to move on. The image of "hundreds and thousands" of empty hospital beds is a reprentation of how the victim's family and friends will move on eventually and vacate the state of mind that the victim's illness put them in. Eventually, everyone will have moved past the situation, leaving only the partner still tied to it ("all of them [beds] empty but mine").
   
   The partner has spent so long at the victim's side that who he is will forever remain changed. Having to make the transition leaves the partner confused -he sees elements of the victim in him. The new version of the partner is ill-equipped to survive in a "normal" setting and this realisation causes him pain similar to the victim's.
   
   I have at least 3 distinct interpretations of the song and this is a mash-up of those. My favourite theme that is is carried over is that of the victim being eternally bound to her partner. You can't go through that much crap togehter and them make a clean break.
   Even when the partner starts making ammends to those he pushed away while he was still in a relationship with the victim (the song "Wake") -he still cannot go back to who he was. The last song in the album "Epilogue", brings the story of the victim and her caregiver partner to a nice close with this line "But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep, your face is up against mine I'm too terrified to speak".
   
   The Hospice album is perhaps one of history's greatest context.
   
   (I'm sorry if my ramblings made no sense. I'm just a fan giving her take. You can tweet any feedback to me @Oh_kay_then)

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