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Peter Gabriel - The Family And The Fishing Net

Peter Gabriel - The Family And The Fishing Net Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Security
Released: 1982

The Family And The Fishing Net Lyrics

Suffocated by mirrors, stained by dreams
Her honey belly pulls the seams
Curves are still upon the hinge
Pale zeros tinge the tiger skin

Moist as grass, ripe and heavy as the night
The sponge is full, well out of sight
All around the conversations
Icing on the warm flesh cake

Light creeps through her secret tunnels
Sucked into the open spaces
Burning out in sudden flashes
Draining blood from well-fed faces

Desires form in subtle whispers
Flex the muscles in denial
Up and down its pristine cage
So the music, so the trial

Vows of sacrifice, headless chickens
Dance in circles, they the blessed
Man and wife, undressed by all
Their grafted trunks in heat possessed

Even as the soft skins tingle
They mingle with the homeless mother
Who loves the day but lives another
That once was hers

The worried father, long lost lover
Brushes ashes with his broom
Rehearses jokes to fly and hover
Bursting over the bride and groom

And the talk goes on

Memories crash on tireless waves
The lifeguards whom the winter saves

Silence falls the guillotine
All the doors are shut
Nervous hands grip tight the knife
In the darkness, till the cake is cut

Passed around, in little pieces
The body and the flesh
The family and the fishing-net
And another in the mesh

The body and the flesh

Writer/s: GABRIEL, PETER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Family And The Fishing Net Song Chart

This is about the absurdities of traditional weddings. The territorial battles, rings, and vows seem ridiculous from an outsiders point of view.

The lyrics were inspired by the early poetry of Dylan Thomas.

Gabriel's marriage to his first wife Jill hit a crisis when she had an affair with David Lord, the co producer of Security, and in this song he foreshadowed the marital tension. He told Mojo April 2010: "We think we're islands, but we're all connected in a landmass. What you see above the water is two people getting married. But beneath the water are the tentacles of two larger, dominant organisms which are the families making connection through those two particular tentacles. But we never observe and recognise that."