By Curt Smith and Charlton Pettus

You're bathed and crowned
I'm bruised and torn
You're tied and cleaned
I'm shorn again
How will you raise or fall or will we try
I'm halfway pleased to meet you
You're still and cool below the fray
I'm stemmed and mapped
You're cut away
How will we raise or fall or will we try
I'm halfway pleased to meet you
I'm halfway pleased to meet you
You're shrunk and left
I'm staid and grown
You're boxed and down
I stand alone
How will we raise or fall or will we try
I'm halfway pleased to meet you
I'm halfway pleased to meet you
I'm halfway pleased to meet you

**********

The story:

My first thought was that she’s not coming back. I use the bars to pull myself up as I watch the door slowly close behind her. I’m aware that crying gets me nowhere so I crawl stoically to the center of my confined space. My focus is downwards, towards the things that will distract me, as if the circumstance I find myself in will no longer exist if I don’t allow myself to see it. But then what the hell do I know? 



I know I can’t survive on my own. 



I’m not aware of how much time passes before she returns. In fact I have no concept of time at all. I’m aware of the hunger though. It’s been slowly creeping up on me and trying to pull me out of my imaginary world. I’ve been busy trying to create more and more elaborate scenarios with the tools on offer just to keep it at bay, but there’s only so much a boy can do.

Finally I hear the door slowly open and she returns. I look up expectantly but she doesn’t make eye contact, she’s in another world also. I watch as she pulls the chair from its assigned position against the wall and places it in front of her. She’s still focused on the unknown as she pulls me away from my diversions and straps me into the chair. I smile at the unintentional symbolism of her keeping me at arm’s length whilst feeding me. Even at my age I feel it’s best to have a sense of humor about these things.



As the hunger slowly dissipates I try to draw her into conversation, unfortunately somewhere between my brain and my mouth the words become confused and exit as garbled nonsense, exacerbated by the fact that every time I open my mouth she sees it as an invitation for more food. I wish I could ask her why. Why are you so angry? Why are you so tense? Why are you so down? Why do you keep putting food into my mouth when I’m not hungry anymore? But all I succeed in doing is spraying her with vegetables, which doesn’t really seem to help her predicament.



When the food is finally finished she roughly wipes the remnants from my face, and with a burdened sigh she unties me from the chair and lifts me into her arms. I’d like to take it as a sign of affection but the slow beat of her hand on my back tells me otherwise. Still, it’s close enough for now and as the rhythm becomes her heartbeat I start to drift away.

In my dreams we’re sitting on the floor of an empty white room, she’s looking at me with a mixture of longing and confusion but at least she’s looking. After a while she opens her mouth for what seems like the first time and speaks.

“You're bathed and crowned, I'm bruised and torn. You're tied and cleaned, I'm shorn again. How will you raise? Or fall? Or will we try? I'm halfway pleased to meet you.”



Without thought I reach up and touch her face, to my surprise my words come out clearly.



“You're still and cool, below the fray. I'm stemmed and mapped, you're cut away. How will we raise? Or fall? Or will we try? I'm halfway pleased to meet you.”

The story behind the story:

Therein lies the problem. A person who loves literature, music and cryptic crosswords. That’s me. I’m not a novelist as you can tell. My pleasure comes from taking an entire emotional scene and trying to condense it into four indecipherable lines. I have a hard time getting to the point. 



In this case I have a mother who’s going through post partum depression and a child (me) who’s not getting the love and attention he needs. Unfortunately that neither sings well nor satisfies my taste for the obscure. 



So I take a birth scene from the mother’s viewpoint, where the child gets all the attention once he’s cut away from the mother – bathed, wrapped up warm, a hat placed on his head – and make it sound like a ceremonial bathing and crowning. The line also has religious and medical interpretations – Jesus’ birth and the stage in delivery where the largest part of the fetal head has emerged. In England there is actually an order of chivalry bestowed by the ruling King or Queen called “The Order Of The Bath” which dates back to a time when ritual bathing was part of the process of creating a knight. The fact that I’m from Bath doesn’t escape me.



The child is also “tied and cleaned”. The literal translation is of course the tying of the umbilical cord and washing, but it also means the child is pulled away from the mother and cleansed of everything the mother used to protect it. The same words however portray the child as someone who will always be tied to the mother in an emotional sense, and as a blank canvass for the parents to draw upon.



The mother herself is bruised, torn and shaved again (I was the second child and yes, they used to do that). I liked these specific words because bruised can also refer to a fruit that is no longer ripe or useful and feelings of emotional pain. Torn can mean uncertain or ripped away. Shorn – to deprive someone of power and simply because my older brother is called Shaun. For me these two lines sum up the twisted emotions of post partum depression. We’ve made it to word fifteen!



“How will you raise? Or fall? Or will we try? I’m halfway pleased to meet you”

One of my favorite lines, hence the album title giving it yet another twist. How will the child and mother grow? Will they raise each other up? Make each other better? The word could also be spelled raze – to destroy or flatten. Will they fall in the literal sense (fail) or fall in love? Will they attempt to make it work or spend their life testing each other (try)? The split meanings in all these words lead to “I’m halfway pleased to meet you”.



The second verse is sung from my viewpoint. The mother is still. This could be unmoved or quiet, it’s also used in “be still” or “I’m still here”. Still – it’s still “still”, at which point you’d be getting to the point of my aforementioned point which is about how long it takes me to get to the point, cool? 

Cool could mean calm and full of self-control, it could also be neither hot nor cold – indifferent. She could blow her cool or be fashionably cool. All of these explain the uncertainty felt whilst waiting for the reaction of a highly-strung mother. “Below the fray” as opposed to above. My mother was never above an argument. Below also gives the sense of below the radar, hidden. In this sense fray would be the frayed edges or frayed nerves, always hidden behind a “cool” front. 



“I’m stemmed and mapped, you’re cut away”. Stem cells and genetic maps were the initial inspiration for this line but the word stem has a couple of other meanings here. Stem - meaning to stop the flow, to restrain. Stem – to originate from. Stem – the stalk that supports the flower. Map can be to plan, map out. It’s also used to describe a face, a map of time, and to be “put on the map” - discovered. Cut away is another reference to the umbilical cord, but it could be written with a comma in the middle (as the album title) – cut, away. Here it would mean diluted (cut), less than pure and absent (away).



The third and final verse is looking to the future and how I envision I’ll feel when my mother dies. Shrunk here is the past tense of shrinking - from danger, responsibility or contact. It also refers to shrinking with age and being posthumously psychoanalyzed. Left - on one hand means gone and on the other the opposite of right. It can mean to disregard or neglect or be left alone. She also leaves behind three sons. Staid – sedate and fixed, dulled. It’s another word that could have an alternative spelling – stayed. To stay behind or stay with something, endure - to wait. A stay of execution - I’ll stay to the end. Grown – from growing inside of you to growing out of you. Cultivated – grown from you. “You’re boxed and down” has a certain finality about it, a knockout punch. It refers to being boxed in and restricted, placed in a coffin. Depressed, down and out.



In the end, after all the word play:

I stand alone.

Halfway pleased.