Twist In My Sobriety lyrics

Wow... This song is deep! I think it has purposely been written without clear meaning, so everyone can put their own meaning to it, so it makes sense to them. Songs, religious books and poetry often do this – so everyone can relate to the writing at their own level.

I don't think that this song is trying to communicate a clear, specific rational message. Instead, it is using words in an artful way to try to convey, relate or inspire feelings and emotions.

I will give my interpretations below, but i fully realize that someone else may interpret it very differently, and that their interpretations would be just as valid as mine. Only the composer would fully understand the thoughts and feelings that they had in mind, when they composed the song. But, the composer may have purposely kept the meaning unclear – knowing that it would inspire different thoughts and feelings in different listeners. Thus, her goal was perhaps not to communicate a specific meaning – but rather to inspire different thoughts and feelings, and perhaps just to encourage people to stop and think about the meaning of life themselves. Below, my interpretations are added, in parentheses.

Tanita tikaram - twist in my sobriety lyrics
Album: ancient heart

All god's children need travelling shoes
Drive your problems from here (we all need to keep growing, learning and moving on in life)
All good people read good books
Now your conscience is clear
I hear you talk girl
Now your conscience is clear (through books, media and culture, society tells us what we should think, and how we should act. Whether or not these rules and values are true or valid, if we accept them and “follow the rules” we can consider ourselves good people, with a clear conscience. But,we may be just rationalizing and kidding ourselves. Being accepting and obedient of what we are told, does not necessarily make us good people).

In the morning when i wipe my brow (i still must endure the drudgery of life)
Wipe the miles away (when i try to rise above my past, and understand things beyond my own experience... )
I like to think i can be so willed
And never do what you say
I'll never hear you
And never do what you say (i fool myself that i can see unbiased truth or attain a higher level of consciousness than my culture and past have provided me, and i fool myself that i can be fully my own person, who is rational and unbiased, without influence and manipulation from my past experience, culture and other people. Without my past and the values that i adopted from family, society and culture – which i use to evaluate and understand the world – life would have no meaning. But since i cannot trust that these values are true or valid (as explained in the first verse) - life has no reliable meaning anyway).

Look my eyes are just holograms (my eyes just see projections,or, what they see is not real)
Look your love has drawn red from my hands (i do know that emotions – such as your love and the pain that comes with it - touch me and move me deeply. Thus, my emotions are real and have meaning, truth and reality - that is beyond words or rationality, and beyond the unreliable, manipulative biases of my culture and books)
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
(since emotions are the only true reality for me, you only exist or have significance in my reality, because you have touched my emotions. You (or the emotions you have stirred in me) have “put a twist in my sobriety”. These emotions have taken me out of the false and unreliable (sober) world of rationality, and allowed me to feel real and alive. When you stop stirring them in me, i will no longer see you, or value you. You will no longer be real to me. You will never be more to me, than your ability to stir my emotions).

We've just poked a little empty pie
For the fun that people had at night
Late at night don't need hostility
The timid smile and pause to free
(our sex allowed us to escape our lives, our worries, our troubles and even ourselves for a time, but it was or is just fun, and has no meaning or significance beyond the moment)

I don't care about their different thoughts (that other people see and value things different than me)
Different thoughts are good for me (i want to grow by seeing things from many perspectives)
Up in arms and chaste and whole (people so often think that they are right and righteous, and that others who disagree with them are wrong and misled. People are angered (up in arms) when others disagree with them. When (shallow) people are so convinced they are right, it gives them license to see and treat others (who are wrong) as less worthy, or to even take up arms against those who see things differently)
All god's children took their toll (every society and group of people is guilty of this intolerance and false belief in their own shallow perceptions of reality, and we all pay a price for it)

Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety

Cup of tea, takes time to think, yeah
Time to risk a life, a life, a life (we spend much of our lives trying to figure it all out. And every perception and major life decision based on our perceptions - comes with great risk)
Sweet and handsome
Soft and porky (sex is a major satisfaction in life, and the opposite sex keeps drawing our attention)
You peg out 'til you've seen the light
Peg out 'til you've seen the light (we keep busy, occupied and distracted playing the game of life, even though we don't understand its real meaning or purpose. Some people “see the light” when they finally understand that there is no real or solid meaning or purpose. Others just keep playing the game of life until they die (“see the light”) – never realizing that they were just pawns and fools of shallow perceptions and meaning that was given or sold to them)

Half the people read the papers
Read them good and well (they are good students of what their culture and media tell them to think and feel. But they are unkowingly being led like sheep people, or “sheeple”).
Pretty people, nervous people (people cope and are shaped in different ways, but we are all on shaky ground, as we all have shallow perceptions about what is important in life (such as being pretty), and since we live our lives based on those shallow perceptions, it makes many of us uncertain and nervous)
People have got to sell (we are all enslaved by the need to eat and make a living)
News you have to sell (we gain a measure of (political) power when we can convince others to see life the same way we do, so we spend much of our time trying to “sell” people our perceptions, or perceptions that will help us to survive or prosper. This is what politics and marketing are all about. We are both the manipulators and the manipulated. We have to do this just to survive, and we must do it a lot to be successful in the game of life in this world)

Look my eyes are just holograms
Look your love has drawn red from my hands
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
More than twist in my sobriety
(the feelings of the moment are the only thing that has any real meaning, and they can only give escape, freedom and deep satisfaction – temporarily. You only exist in my reality to the degree that you can provide me with this escape - from the false and shallow perceptions that result from everyday coping and life)
___

It seems to me that this composer is struggling herself to understand the meaning of life. Perhaps she has had fleeting glimpses of a higher level of consciousness, that have given her an appreciation of how shallow that most peoples' (highly shaped) perceptions of life are (including her own). I think she is just sharing her feelings and confusion with us, as she is in the same struggle to understand and make sense of it, as the rest of us are.

If she is involved with drugs (as many artists seem to be), then perhaps she feels numbed, or confused on an emotional roller-coaster - and sex is one of the few things that cuts through the fog and touches her, or makes her feel real. If this were the case, this whole song may just be her expression of her feelings for another person that she was having a sexual relationship with, and the meaning of the relationship to her. I don't think anyone can know for sure.

In any case, her song really challenges me, and i like both its words, and its sound. In line with what i think she was trying to say; “i like how it makes me feel”.

- warm1