I’m not my everyday self;
what you’re seeing is me trying too hard
I’m the clown that always wants to make you laugh,
who lets you see me play the fool
Let’s gather our luggage and embark on a freight train to a town, somewhere
Inside the train we look at the landscape and remember all sorts of things
In search of the days when we could laugh innocently
And because there’s no place here anymore to sleep,
Let’s find a time capsule, together
We were freezing…. there’s no one standing in our way anymore, is there?
From the back streets, let’s go together
“to that place”
At the last stop, there must be a new world we’ll create, surely
The sky’s evening glow, the autumn colours of the trees, and the cobalt blue lake, too, is in this hand
Inside the train we look at the landscape and remember all sorts of things
In search of the days when we could laugh innocently
And because there’s no place here anymore to sleep,
Let’s find a time capsule, together
Here and now, we’ll put up a stone monument for the two of us
Even if the world were to end, let’s meet here again
It’s a promise, the one and only anthology
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NOTES / INTERPRETATION:
Thoughts. The emotional warmth and camaraderie in this song is palpable, both in the lyrics and in the music that carries the listener forward, slowly but surely, through the countryside the lyrics depict. Whether the travellers are best friends, lovers, or both, the atmosphere of the song is incredibly peaceful. However, according to my understanding of these lyrics (which, of course, might not correspond to what SHOU intended in his writing of them) they also seem to describe a tragedy. That is, during the course of the train ride in the song, the two travellers either died by accident due to the cold or were travelling to a distant place in order to take their own lives and leave the world behind. The imagery of time capsules and stone monuments hint at this interpretation, as does the idea that there is no where left to sleep and no one standing in their way any longer. Perhaps their souls are now free to wander the back streets of the faraway town together, to wander anywhere together until the world ends.
That being said, the two final lines let us wonder at another option: that the two travellers together placed ordinary stones in a location only they knew of in a faraway town, promising to return to that exact spot to find one another if the world should end — or on a day, long into the future, when they might be reincarnated as different people.
What is the world end anthology?
I’ve wondered at that a lot over the years — have always loved this song title.
Maybe it is a collection of all the stories of the two travellers’ reincarnations through the ages; each time their world ends, a new one begins, a common thread running through each of the disparate stories that hold the anthology together.
No matter the explanation or interpretation, it is a beautiful piece, and a longtime favourite song of mine.
If you’re curious, you can read more about this song, and others from the same album in [ this interview ]
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アリス九號. ★ ワールドエンドアンソロジー → 絶景色 (将・2006)
ALICE NINE. – WORLD END ANTHOLOGY | From zekkeishoku (Show – 2006)
Original text translated from Japanese.
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