Epilogue
The Antlers Lyrics
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You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake
Your dreams still follow storylines, like fictions you would make
So I lie down against your back, until we're both back in the hospital
But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue
Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you
In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep
But I know better as my eyes adjust
You've been gone for quite a while now, and I don't work there in the hospital
(They had to let me go)
When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift
I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift)
But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep
Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
The Antlers's song Epilogue portrays a man's nightmare where he is falling from the ceiling into the bed beside his partner. The man attempts to wake his partner, but she is unresponsive in her sleep, unaware of the life around her. She continues to dream, creating storylines for herself like fictions, while the man tries to rouse her while still in bed. The sense of futility is expressed in the line, "But all you want is to be buried there together." He wishes to free her from her dreams, but she seems to want to live within them.
The song evolves into a different part of the nightmare, where the man and woman find themselves in a hospital ward. However, it's not the cancer ward that it once was; instead, they are now sleeping in the morgue. The scene is even stranger because they are buried in earth up to their neck. The people surrounding the couple are men and women in blue and white who are singing while holding shovels. However, his partner doesn't seem to fear being buried alive, for she is content there with him. The man becomes aware that his partner is in the past and she's been gone for quite a while, leading him to believe that he may have created this nightmare.
The chorus of the song- "You're screaming and cursing and angry and hurting me, and then smiling and crying apologizing"- shines a light on the emotional volatility of relationships. The singer is painfully aware that his partner is gone from his life, yet she haunts him in his dreams, causing him to feel both comfort and fear. The lyrics of the song suggest that the dream may be depicting the man's realization that his partner has passed away, and this is his way of expressing the grief that he cannot process during the day.
Line by Line Meaning
In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you
I feel helpless and trapped in my own mind, falling into my fears while lying next to you.
You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up
I'm desperately trying to reach you, to wake you from your slumber, but you remain unresponsive.
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake
Even when you're awake, you seem to be disengaged from life and simply going through the motions.
Your dreams still follow storylines, like fictions you would make
Your dreams feel like a made-up story that you're living; a way to escape the reality you're not interested in.
So I lie down against your back, until we're both back in the hospital
I'm trying to be here for you, to support you through whatever you may be going through.
But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue
We've entered a new stage in our journey where death seems to be a looming presence in our lives.
Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you
The sounds of others around us, immersed in life and death, create a haunting and surreal atmosphere.
With heavy shovels holding earth, you're being buried to you neck
The imagery of being buried alive is a metaphor for our struggles, as we feel trapped and overwhelmed by our circumstances.
In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now
We're stuck in a stagnant state, feeling suffocated and unable to move forward or escape our current situation.
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together
I want to help you, but you seem to prefer the safety and familiarity of staying where we are, even if it's not healthy or sustainable.
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
You're overwhelmed with emotions, ranging from anger to sadness, but you also feel remorseful for the pain you're causing.
I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me
I'm alone now; the person I love is gone and I'm left to navigate this new reality on my own.
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep
But I know better as my eyes adjust
You've been gone for quite a while now, and I don't work there in the hospital
(They had to let me go)
You may physically be gone, but I know that you've slipped away from me emotionally and we've been drifting apart for some time now. My job at the hospital may also represent the end of a chapter in our lives.
When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift
I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift)
I feel paralyzed, weighed down by the emotional burden of losing you. Your absence feels like a suffocating weight, but I also recognize that it's time to move on and start processing my grief.
But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep
Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak
You continue to haunt me, even in my dreams, and I'm unable to escape the pain of losing you. I'm overwhelmed by the memories and the fear of moving on.
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Peter Joseph Silberman
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@Zaiiiiin
In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you
You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake
Your dreams still follow storylines, like fictions you would make
So I lie down against your back, until we're both back in the hospital
But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue
Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you
With heavy shovels holding earth, you're being buried to you neck
In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep
But I know better as my eyes adjust
You've been gone for quite a while now, and I don't work there in the hospital
(They had to let me go)
When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift
I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift)
But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep
Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
@adrioden6828
This song speaks in so many volumes. I've shown this song and this band to so many people and they all kind of get this weird mix of disgust and depression, and I personally am just filled with comfort at the level of understanding.
When I was 12, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The next 4 years were filled with me being her care taker and filling 99% of my time with that. I didn't go to school, it was my duty to take care of her, and the grieving family on my mother's side who we moved in with. I could feel no emotion of my own, the sadness and pain was reserved for her and my family. I was the shoulder. My father was abusive as all hell, he blamed it on the grief, but he was like that well before the diagnosis. My mother always enabled, and sometimes encouraged the behavior as well. He did countless acts of cruelty, some more noteworthy being sexually abusing me, leaving me with bumps and bruises consistently, telling me all I'll ever be good for is being everyone's maid (because I spent a lot of time cleaning my families home to keep stress levels down), and breaking the leg of my pet lizard out of anger.
She was bed-ridden, and had been since her diagnosis. I would routinely check on her every hour throughout the days, I would never allow myself to falter. It had been this way for 4 years. I woke up one day at exactly 12pm, I was so tired, I didn't have a room of my own, there were too many people cramped in the house, I slept on the floor of the bathroom at night, and on the porch during the day. It was cold, and there were mice. I never got much sleep. This was the first time I had woken up late. I went to check on her, she seemed fine. She was asleep, and by that point, it was hard for her to stay consistently asleep. I figured, let her sleep for now, I'll gently wake her with a meal in an hour or so and try to get her to eat. I decided to catch up on sleep by laying down in her bed next to her. An hour later, I was woken up by her choking on her own vomit, and flailing her limbs wildly while still laying on her back. Her eyes were rapidly moving. Her organs were failing. I held the hand of the woman who enabled my rape, and the theft of my youth, as she suffered and died. I sat there and gently padded up the frothing vomit and drool with a rag, and cried cathartic tears for a few hours, till the body started to smell oddly sweet and gross. I watched as the men loaded her body onto a truck, and took it away. I was freshly 16.
I thought her death would allow for my family to finally grieve completely, and begin to move on and be okay, but it just sent everyone around me hurling into madness. When several suicide attempts failed, I eventually was able to move in with a long distance boyfriend I had had on and off for a few years. His mom overheard over the phone an outburst of my father's involving a thrown beer bottle. She was more than willing to invite me to live with them. They lived hours and hours away, in a rural area of Missouri. Lots of farm land, corn, cows, and confusing highways. It was very isolated. Every day became progressed turmoil, I soon learned this boy I had only dated online, and seen twice, was also abusive. He left me covered in injuries on a regular basis, including broken teeth, broken nose, and gaping wounds he wouldn't ever let completely heal. His family would turn a blind eye out of fear. I stayed with him for years and convinced myself that my only path in life was to be his stress relief, even if it was only a punching bag. I grew a Stockholm, Freudian love for him. I wanted so badly to make him happy. There were times when it seemed possible, but I knew in those moments of happiness, soon enough, he would descend into a fit of sadness and anger again. It felt like literally anything could set him off. He would tear me open for a spilled cup of water, or keys dropped into the couch. He would bend my arm back and hold it that way, the tendons ripping, and the bone about to split, if I stepped out of line, and said anything that could have been taken as "I wasn't on his side.". The world was out to get him, and I was his solace in a never-ending time of depression, I needed to be his relief, he needed me. And he needed to be my savior, the one who rescued me from my family. Everything he could do to me, was better than what I had to go through living with my family. Nothing he did counted because of them. He was entitled to my eternal gratitude.
I visited an old friend one weekend with my boyfriend, after my friend's girlfriend showed interest in involving me in a threesome with her and her chick friend. My boyfriend was obsessed with lesbians, he was always taking out his anger on me and everything around him, because I didn't have a girl to have sex with, and allow him to watch. I wrote erotica for him, but he was long desensitized to it. When the threesome fell through, the friend of mine witnessed a tantrum my boyfriend threw directed at me. The friend pulled me aside and asked if he was always like this, and if the bruises were from him. I told the friend to fuck off. By the way, I'm straight, I did lesbian things for him, because "he needed the relief."
Eventually, that friend confronted me, and told me I NEEDED to leave my boyfriend, or I would die. I said I didn't care, and that my boyfriend needed me, that he's stressed from work and life, and that eventually we'll be okay and he'll change. My friend was very harsh, he essentially told me straight up that my boyfriend will never change, and that as long as I was with him, I was enabling a sociopath to torture their victim. It took time and many mental break downs, but I couldn't deny that my friend was right. The last straw was... actually a collection of events. My memory is fuzzy, I sustained head injuries at the time, but from what I can remember, he strangled a dog I took in, and stomped on a cat. He beat me up and ripped into the hood of my clitoris out of spite, and walked in on me while I was using the bathroom, stood in front of me crossing his arms while I peed, and told me to quit talking to my friend or I didn't respect our relationship.
I left my boyfriend, I was completely broken by that point. I had medical bills galore, and I was hiding held up in that friends home.
It was a long horrible recovery process, but I was glad my friend was so hard on me. Eventually we actually started dating.
I've lived through the literal metaphor this album conveys, watching a cancer patient die slowly, and watching the descent of a sociopath as they grow accustom to taking out their anger on you, a duality of abuse through very similar psychological paths. I know the catharsis, the mental anguish of caring for someone you love who's killing you, who's robbing you, as they wither and die, and you abandon ship.
@ariesmoon102
This song, this fucking song is what I live for. You can actually hear the emotion in his voice and you feel a million different feelings at once. It's like I'm listening in 3D and I've been thrown into his world. Songs like this are so hard to find and even harder to listen too. These songs can catch you into a depressive whirlpool but damn it if it isn't the best thing I've ever heard. Play this at my funeral on repeat for 3 hours. Fuck it, bury me with an MP3 Player with this song on repeat. Because this.is.the.best.song.ive.ever.heard.
@KaylaAmberPerkins
KETTERING IS THE BEST
@SteelxPulse
AriesMoon have you heard of The I Love You Bridge by The Crookes? it is a really good song and if you do some research, the meaning behind it is crazy.
@jas4831
Dude fr I cry everytime :(
@Zaiiiiin
In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you
You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake
Your dreams still follow storylines, like fictions you would make
So I lie down against your back, until we're both back in the hospital
But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue
Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you
With heavy shovels holding earth, you're being buried to you neck
In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep
But I know better as my eyes adjust
You've been gone for quite a while now, and I don't work there in the hospital
(They had to let me go)
When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift
I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift)
But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep
Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
@zdgSRghE
"You know when I tear up?
Right at the end.
the last 30 seconds of the album
The melody instantly changes to a potato quality lullaby which symbolizes death.
You love someone, and you lose them. You suffer and cry and beat yourself up over them, and as your doing this, life goes on, nobody really cares.
People die all the time on TV and do you mourn? No you move on and keep with your daily life. You see names in the obituary and do you even care? No you use the paper for your puppy in potty training.
Nobody cares when someone dies, the same will happen to you, life goes on." ~Anon
@davidboguzes9576
Damn man. Very True.
@Dufresne117
+Tyrone Legstrong Sr. Jr. III wow I was the one who posted that on /mu/ didn't think anyone saved it.
@frogger6991
CAKE That's the part that gets me, too. This comment instantly made me tear up.
@FReaKoNaLeaSH12321
An amazing finish to the album, especially coming off of "Wake".
That track ends on an almost happy note, saying not to beat yourself up, that some people are beyond help and that you shouldn't feel badly about it.
Then "Epilogue" comes in and pulls you right back down. When you're alone at night thinking, all those memories and feelings come back to you, like they never really go away.
Truly one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.