"Sylvia Says" by Charlotte Gainsbourg

Wow. I just can't get this new song "Sylvia Says" by Charlotte Gainsbourg out of my head. Taken from her new release "Rest", it was suffused and born from the grief of losing her half-sister, photographer Kate Barry to suicide. The song's title and chorus reference a 1953 poem by Sylvia Plath entitled "Mad Girl's Love Song." I think it is simply amazing that the sound is so funky and dance-able...albeit with some highly theatrical flourishes.

The video itself is oblique and subjective but we see people around Gainsbourg on the streets of Manhattan inexplicably losing consciousness and dropping to the ground, when in reality it is her that is losing consciousness, slipping away to some alternate place...an apt metaphor for grief and loss. When loved ones have been ripped from my life, I am left looking around, wondering how anyone can survive this catastrophic loss...why is everyone still going on like nothing has happened? Why are people still walking down the street, to work or the store, as if they do not know a great rift in the universe has just occurred? Life goes on they say, but the thing they cannot acknowledge is that life does not go on for the one who is gone--they no longer have that luxury. And how to reconcile those two distinct perspectives?

I sweep the cobwebs away
Rise from the slumber room
Kicking around come what may
Sell me a trick or two
The rising sky up above
Always au rendez-vous
Somewhere I've been dreaming of
Over the rainbow too

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says

Picking my socks for the day
Quietly states my mood
Can shape the future with clay
Stars waltzing out in blue
All is beyond and above
Nothing like deja-vu
This time I let down the gloves
Awaking to bring me through

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says

What does the book have to say?
I really don't have a clue
If by the end of the day
Happy fool I salute
For what I'm about to receive
May the lord make me true-
-ly thankful, then I'll believe
Any crap, any cue

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Sylvia says
I lift my lids and all is born again
Sylvia says

And here is Plath's poem:

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

http://www.charlottegainsbourg.com/