These Are the Fables by The New Pornographers Lyrics Meaning – Decoding the Mythopoetic Tapestry of Urban Life
Lyrics
In submarine chambers
One day
It swam for the light
The jewels that lit
The cities that float there
Cities in circles drawn perfect, complete
Holding the secrets on my street
My street, my street
So come in and play
The song of the siren
It’s commonplace
You hear the voice rise
In one wave
And crash on your doorstep
Making the circle here perfect, complete
These are the fables on my street
Ten thousand dancing girls
Kicking cans ‘cross the sky
No reason why
Why ask to pay yourself
For the call of the wild
You found this child
So raise him
And wind your back
Come back to the river
The currents speed by
And hope the men fear
The hammer comes down
So hard on the evening
Cracking the dawn of your
Days are repeat
These are the fables on my street
My street, my street
Heaven shook hell
And down from its pockets
The ring in your bell
It fell through your hands
Hang at your feet
The doors that won’t open
Marking the journey of our friends complete
These are the fables on my street
My street
My street, my street
Lay down in glory, you’re not alone
My street, my street
Lay down in glory, you’re not alone
Hovering in the realms of the mythical and the everyday, The New Pornographers’ song ‘These Are the Fables’ contrives a vision of life that is both intimately familiar and expansively allegorical. With its dreamy cadences and penetrating lyrics, the track stands as a testament to the band’s ability to conjure rich, layered narratives through music.
As the tapestry of images unfurls, listeners are invited on a journey through submarine chambers, urban streets, and celestial dances. But what deeper meanings do these harmonious fables conceal? Through a poetic lens, we dive into the essence of this track, unraveling the threads that make up its complex storytelling fabric.
A Dive into Mythic Depths: Submarine Chambers as a Metaphor
The song’s opening lines plunge us into ‘coral and gray,’ within ‘submarine chambers’—a setting evoking the subconscious, the hidden depths, perhaps, of the human psyche. The lyrical journey towards ‘the light’ encapsulates a universally understood narrative of enlightenment, an emergence from the dark depths of ignorance or oblivion into a state of awareness.
This pursuit is paralleled with the alluring ‘jewels that lit / The cities that float there,’ an image that straddles the line between concrete urban landscapes and ethereal, floating metropolises. The song suggests that these submerged realms are not realms of fantasy but instead, hidden aspects of our familiar surroundings.
Unlocking Urban Legends: The Secrets Held on ‘My Street’
The repeated mention of ‘my street’ roots the fables in the everyday, drawing a connection between the imaginary and the lived environment. To decipher what secrets lie in the geometric perfection of ‘cities in circles drawn perfect, complete,’ one might see the track as a commentary on the cyclical nature of urban life and the tightly circumscribed experiences of its inhabitants.
There’s an intimacy these ‘fables’ share with the narrator, a sense that the stories unfolding are acutely personal yet universal, part of a shared human storybook. The mention of a street suggests a microcosm of society, a place where myriad fates intersect and personal stories become communal lore.
Sirens in the City: The Lure of the Modern Odyssey
The sirens’ song, an allusion possibly to the Homeric tales of temptations and dangers that beset travelers, is reimagined here as the background music of daily life. It is ‘commonplace’ and rises in a wave, crashing on the doorstep. The imagery evokes the invasive, seductive noise of the city—the buzz of signs, the whispers of crowds—and how it reaches into personal living spaces.
It’s this collision between the public and private, the individual’s life with the collective urban pulse, that the New Pornographers handle deftly. The ‘song of the siren’ is perhaps a metaphor for the distracting and enticing elements of our culture that draw us away from inner equilibrium.
Ascend with the Dance: The Levity of ‘Ten Thousand Dancing Girls’
Arguably one of the song’s most vivid and baffling images is that of ‘Ten thousand dancing girls / Kicking cans ‘cross the sky.’ There’s a palpable sense of freedom and unfettered joy in this metaphor, a sublime absurdity that disrupts the expected gravity of mythical or fabled narratives.
And yet, these seraphic dancers pose a rhetorical question: ‘Why ask to pay yourself / For the call of the wild?’ This line could be an exhortation to embrace the natural, instinctual parts of oneself without the need for self-imposed toll or penalty, suggesting that there is a wildness in urban existence that is free for the taking if we are bold enough to claim it.
Revelation on Repeat: Cracking the Dawn of Days
Near the song’s conclusion, there’s a potent image of an evening being ‘cracked’ by the hammer of hard truths and the ‘days are repeat.’ This relentless recurrence could symbolize the wearisome cycle of routines, the inescapable nature of time in urban life, or perhaps the opportunities each new day brings to break patterns and forge new paths.
The phrase ‘These are the fables on my street’ then takes on a layered significance, with ‘fables’ representing not only stories but also lessons to be learned and retold. The song becomes a ledger of life, inscribing the teaching moments that crystallize against the backdrop of our rushed, repeating days.
