Leave My Body - A Personal Analysis

But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process of flux, as we were just now supposing.

Plato

I'm sick, really sick. I've got a cold.

But I really need to write about this song.

The song is "Leave My Body", the twelfth track of Florence + the Machine's new album, Ceremonials.

First, I just wanted to say it's a personal interpretation of the meaning of the lyrics, but Welch's verses are so rich that they can be understood in various ways. And much of what I'll write here is widely related to my personal life - but I won't name no one.


The instrumental of the track is deeply spiritual - as the album itself -, taking you to another sphere. Florence's voice seems to be the perfect way to get there.

She begins with those lines:

I'm gonna be released from behind these lines
I don't care whether I live or die
And I'm losing blood, I'm gonna leave my bones
And I don't want your heart it leaves me cold

I know what is being "released from behind these lines". When I fell in love - it seems so distant, it seems almost as in another incarnation -, I began to write poems. You know, those ridiculous love poems. They were even more ridiculous 'cause it was a impossible love (Do you know Lolita? Something like that.), and I just felt as if when I was writing, all those things inside myself were released. When I wrote, I was free. I called myself as "The Immortal Ophelia". The pain of my love was on my verse, and people could read it and understand me. I felt as it was a kind of salvation. And when I listen the music for the first time, I couldn't say how I was happy 'cause Florence seemed to understand me perfectly!

What about "I don't care whether I live or die/And I'm losing blood, I'm gonna leave my bones/And I don't want your heart it leaves me cold". I feel it as someone who is delivering himself (or herself) away; you know... As if you're a sacrifice for a goddess in the Old Days and you don't care at all. Just the last line is different, it  demonstrates that love can hurt.; the feeling of love as a jewel of light and darkness.

I don't want your future
I don't need your past
One grand moment
Is all I ask

I've read someone saying that this song was about a releasing from a sexual relationship. I think it makes sense ("One grand moment" could be an orgasm. It remembers me French called the orgasm le petite mort). And it's okay. But to me it's so... Different. I felt it like an expression of my damned amorous life. You wouldn't believe how I am unlucky on this heart subjects! Every guy who I get a clash on is... Married, gay or stupid. And OH MY GOSH, they think I WANT TO MARRY THEM, TO LIVE FOREVER WITH THEM. My God, no no no no no! The last thing I want is a marriage! My dad was so cruel to my mommy and me when they were married. It was terrible. I've learned a lot about the male nature with my father. I know how they are volatile, untrue , impetuous... I don't want a marriage, I don't want a prince. Florence says to me everything locked inside my soul: "One grand moment/Is all I ask".

I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(history keeps pulling me down)
Said i'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(history keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

Do you want to know why I've had put Plato in the beggining of the post? That verse show why. Every single time I listen to this I remember Plato's theory! I remember his Metaphysics and the Platonic reality (The Intelligible Realm and Separation of the Forms). When I listen to Florence singing this part I just feel as if she wants to leave her body and sublimate herself through death. I feel like if she's saying she can deliver her body to rot in the ground, 'cause his soul is greater than flesh and bones. When she sings "I'm gonna loose my mind" I feel she's passing to this perfect world Plato told to us in a certain Greece, mainly when I listen to this part: "moving up to higher ground".

The "history keeps pulling me, pulling me down" just seems as if she couldn't get on this perfect world, this perfect reality. The lyrics themselves show this, she's saying she's going to leave her body, but the whole song is like if she's narrating the process, like if the moment isn't already done. So in those lines, when she says "puliing me down" it's just like the moment when everything goes wrong.

Okay, I know it's pretty crazy putting Plato inside a Flo's lyric.

But I am not normal.

Actually, I don't want to be.

Following on the song:

I don't need a husband, don't need no wife
And don't need the day, i don't need the night
And I don't need the birds let them fly away
And I don't want the clouds, they never seem to stay

Those lines sound Platonic too. The person just seems to abandone all the things from the Intelligible Realm, because they're unstable and fake, they can go away easily. They can't be trusted (just like my father, those lines also remembered me him... He once told me when I was a kid, he'd stay with me forever. Such a lie) - we can see this in "And I don't want the clouds, they never seem to stay".

The rest of the lyrics are a repetition:

Pulling me down
Pulling me down
Pulling me down
Pulling me, pulling me down

I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(history keeps pulling me down)
Said i'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(history keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

Yeah, said I'm gonna leave my body
(moving up to higher ground)
I'm gonna lose my mind
(history keeps pulling me down)
(moving up to higher ground)
(history keeps pulling me, pulling me down)

I want to comment about these verses, anyway. I feel them as a claim, a a canticle of the soul. She's screaming, begging for redemption. She needs the hope of Plato. She needs a rest. She needs to leave her body.

P.S.: Sorry for the mistakes on English, I'm Brazilian.