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Previous Song | Next Song
| Album: | Still Life |
| Release Date: | 1999 |
| Track Title: | Face Of Melinda |
| Track Number: | 5 |
| Track Length: | 7:59 |
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Posted By TheLeperAffinity |
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I'm pretty sure that this song in the Still Life story, is when the main character meets with Melinda. I'm not sure whether to talk or possibly run away. Anyway, he learns that she has married again, but he still loves her ('my heart is thine'). So, basically, no matter what, the main character will forever love Melinda. Or so I think. |
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I have a slightly different interpetation. Melinda comes to wherever the main character is staying. They chat for a while, and after nightfall, the main character asks Melinda to come away with him ("Come with me far away to stay"). She tells him that she's married, and therefore can't leave, but that she loves him ("My promise is made, but my heart is thine"). Then, they make love, which is implied more from the music than the lyrics. Of course, in Serenity Painted Death, Melinda is "ripped from my embrace", meaning they were caught in their love-making and executed. A fair number of people on the official Opeth forums disagree with me, though. |
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My interpretation is that, during Moonlapse Vertigo, the narrator meets with Melinda and runs off. Not sure where to though. Anyways, she confesses to him, blah blah blah, they make love like Larrik says. I don't think that they're caught in the actual act, but perhaps later that night.
But perhaps they don't get caught at all. Whenever I listen to Serenity Painted Death, I envision the narrator waking up in the morning, somewhere out in the woods. He discovers that Melinda is no longer by his side. He investigates and finds that Melinda has *gasp!* committed suicide! She couldn't take the pressure and whatever other pain she was feeling at the moment, so she slit her throat ("Red line round her neck"). The way in which her death is described I think also lends credence to this theory.
"Saw her fading, blank stare into me
Clenched fist from the beautiful pain"
From this it seems to me that the narrator is actually holding her body as she is breathing her last breaths. After the initial shock of seeing his beloved die, he goes back into town on a murdurous rampage. He succeeds in taking out some people ("Choking in warm ponds of blood"). Finally, somewhere around night fall ("Came with the moon"), the guy is finally captured ("Finally there to collect me").
Two problems with that scenario:
1) If they are indeed in the woods, how did they get shelter? From the first line of Serenity Painted Death we get a strong hint that this is winter ("Returned from a hibernal dream," hibernal meaning of or related to winter) so shelter is needed. Maybe the narrator has some dingy shack out in the middle of nowhere, but there's no hint of this anywhere.
2) "Red line round her neck" could mean that Melinda was beheaded. However, a beheading would seem like a pretty unusual execution style for this town. Burning at the stake or hanging seems much more typical of a highly Christian (assumption) town such as this. Of course, it could be the case that someone else slit her throat, but again that just doesn't seem right.
In the end, I think the scenario I just described is way better than the whole "they got caught and executed" one. I'm not saying that mine is anymore legitimate than anyone else's, just much more dramatic and befitting of Still Life. An over the top tragic love story deserves an over the top story twist. |
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Posted By SerenityPaintedDeath |
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Actually you are all wrong. Opeth have said that the story is about the Moor coming to her and begging her to come away with him, but she has become a nun (Godhead, harlot of god upon the earth). That is what it means by "she's sworn her vows to another". At the end of the song, she is killed for consorting with him after he was banished. |
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isn't the song named after mikael's first daughter???? |
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Mikael's daughter was born long after this CD came out. |
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Newest Musing
Patterns in the Ivy 2,
from Blackwater Park:
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"This song could be about mourning a lost friend; the Patterns in the Ivy being ivy crawling over an unkempt, old tombstone. " - by Mushi-Maligna
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