Audio Quote: Clumsy

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When: Feb. 14th, 2024 at 10:00 P.M. EST
Who: Our Lady Peace
Album: Clumsy
Released: Apr. 1997 (Album)
Song: Clumsy
Lyrics:

Throw away this very old shoelace
That tripped you again
Try and shrug it off, shrug it off, shrug it off
It's only skin now
You need to understand
There's nothing fake about this
.......
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need
A friend as clumsy as you've been
There's no one laughing
You will be safe in here
You will be safe in... Oooo
I'll be waving my hand
Watching you drown
Watching you scream
Quiet or loud
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need
A friend as clumsy as you've been
There's no one laughing

All images, content, and media ©2023 Our Lady Peace, Columbia, Sony Music and are respectively owned by any changes in ownership since Sony’s parent buyout of MGM and merger with Amazon.com

Comments:

I didn’t know that this song was actually the entire basis for one of the main title tracks off of an album that was released over 20 years ago. I actually attended the “Clumsy after 20 years” event held in Niagara Falls, and while the band was changing with age, it’s voice and meaning was still the same. However, still in 2017 I still did not know that Clumsy itself was based on a rather obscure work by Stevie Smith. In her work entitled “Not Waving but Drowning“, which also, like Clumsy, is the title of the publication and of the section containing the concerning text.

“Not Waving, But Drowning” by Stevie Smith (1957) is directly correlated by not just it’s title but reference to the lines throughout the few stanzas:
And not waving but drowning.

An interpretation on genius.com (https://genius.com/Our-lady-peace-clumsy-lyrics, retrieved on Feb. 14th, 2024 – 10:30 PM EST) states:

There’s a line in the song that says: ‘I’ll be waving my hand/watching you drown/watching you scream’, it’s about seeing something but not seeing it for what it really is. It’s about decisions. That image of ‘waving your hand/watching you drown,’ is about seeing someone in the water, they’re waving at you, and you’re just waving back, not realizing that they’re drowning. Or you think they’re drowning, but they’re just waving at you.


What am I doing? As of today, ironically on this Feb. the 14th, 2024 I no longer can tell the difference.

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