Futures and Pasts

Lyrics

(1)

I was in a sleeping dream
When a policeman brought my mother home
By the window I didn't scream
I was too old for that

I was in a drunken dream
The pubs were closed
It was three o'clock (2)
At the bottom of the street it seemed
There was a policeman lost in the fog (3)

I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't read it
Futures and Pasts  

You can cry for your lost childhood
Will you cry for our lost childhoods?
But remember how you hated it (4)
And worse cause you couldn't state it? (5)

I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't read it
Futures and Pasts 

Look at the woman of thirty-nine
Look at the man of forty-nine
You can read their lousy lives
You can see their ugly face lines

They understand but they don't see it
They understand but they don't see it
I understand but I don't read it
Futures and Pasts

I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't read it
Futures and Pasts

Notes

1. This song, an astoundingly mature lyric from the first Fall album, considers time as a kind of maze, always circling back round to the center, the isolated self bewitched by a procession of events that are factually varied but identical in their meaning, or perhaps it is more apt to say their lack of meaning. People stumble past one another in the fog, or encounter each other with unpleasant or disastrous results. The theme of time as a repetitious cycle is also explored in "Backdrop," whereas the possibility of the cycle being disrupted by revolution is addressed in "The N.W.R.A." In the latter song, a revolution fails to break the cycle, but it is raised there as a possibility, or at least as something thinkable. William Blake, one of MES's primary influences, thinks of historical time as a fallen and cyclical round of suffering and ignorance, only redeemable by the chance of a rupture, associated with the (for Blake, divine)  power of the imagination. In Blake's earlier works this rupture is more explicitly associated with a political revolution, whereas the later work seems more skeptical about political power in general. The earlier view is found in "America, a Prophecy," the source for MES's lyrics in "W.B."

From Dan:

"In a letter to Tony Friel dated 24 November 1976 (Friel briefly published a selection online a few years ago), MES says: 'Here is the chorus from a song i am currently working on. I have many fragments but cannot seem to fit them into a complete whole: "I understand but I don't see it Futures and pasts" I think it will be one of my best. The music must be good dear T- I was thinking of a thrash out on gtr., with loping bass runs that you are so good at and that Doug Yule plays excellently on "Live '69." ("Shoulder Pads #1": "Couldn't tell Lou Reed from Doug Yule").

^

2.   Dan: "Under the first world war Defence of the Realm Act 1914, pubs were restricted to 12:00-14:40 and 18:30-21:30. Obviously things liberalised over the years, but it wasn't until the 1988 Licensing Act that (most) pubs were allowed to open from 11am to 11pm, rather than having to close for the afternoon."

I always assumed it was 3 am. But if, as Dan says, the pubs in Britain close at 11 pm (wow! lame island, how 'bout it!) then it is at least as likely that the line means 3 pm.

^

3. The policeman in the fog hearkens back to the officer in the first verse who brought the protagonist's mother home. Fog stands out to me as a central symbol in this song, which hints at the gulf between infancy (infant literally means "unable to speak") and maturity, which is above all a state of linguistic competence (see note 3 below, which examines a line in the third verse where the connection between suffering and language is is made explicit, and in which I attempt to justify the "above all"). I don't take the fog to be infancy or maturity, but the gap between them: there's a gulf between the mute and therefore lawless child and the policeman who is a representative of the Law (I capitalize the word because I intend a broader scope for it then the statutes of Manchester city), the linguistic-conceptual matrix in which humans come to reside after being ejected from their original, speechless home that is the state of infancy. The narrator is here returned to a kind of simulacrum of infancy by his drunkenness, and sees time folding back in on itself as he gazes into the fog at the policeman. He is again at that precise state where he is "too old" to "scream"--if he did not want to scream, there'd be no point in mentioning it, but he can no longer express himself so immediately. Meaning and inner being are now separate for him, whereas if a scream is not quite meaningful, it does express perfectly the inner state of the infant: perhaps the only time an infant is able to fully communicate is when screaming, since pain may be the only experience or state of consciousness which is sufficiently simple not to require language to be accurately and unmistakably conveyed. Thus, the narrator is in a sense exactly where he was in the first verse again in the second: a state of mind between language and infancy, a state for which fog is an entirely apt symbol (a possible clue can be found in the opening lines of "Nate Will Not Return," which equate "Coming out of the fog" with "Grasping the connection/Grasping the deception"). That the policeman, representative of the Law (and emissary of misery!), is himself "lost in the fog" is another turn of the screw: there's a sense in which the suffering of the protagonist is not private. To be more precise, it is private, but it is a universal privacy, which is to say that everyone in the world revealed by the song is isolated and bereft of communication. Everyone in the song is lost in their own idiotic fog of privacy--the Law is itself lost in the fog. The time is not so much, as Shakespeare says, out of joint, as stuck in well-worn grooves, circling back on itself as events which are outwardly different are revealed to be an endless repetition of the same sorrows.

^

 

4. Anti-nostalgia is a common sentiment for the Fall, the problem with nostalgia usually being identified as the crappiness of the past.

^

5. "Worse cause you couldn't state it" concisely indicates the tragedy of childhood, the state of a linguistic being inhabiting a world of language but without being yet fully initiated into its mysteries. Such initiation is surely an ongoing process--sometimes I suspect that maturity and wisdom (if there is a difference between the two) is in many ways a process of becoming more adept at blending the world of one's innermost thoughts, which seems to be private and immediately present, with the public and therefore distancing world of language. No misery is worse than one that cannot be articulated or, what is perhaps just as bad, one that cannot be articulated properly. Indeed, the whole notion of the proper--a word which both implies what is fitting, and what belongs to me--can perhaps be understood not as static possession, but rather as a process in which one negotiates the distance between oneself and oneself: not enough distance means one is inarticulate and unreflective, but too much means one is alienated and lacks self-understanding. The horror of the first verse is that of being too old to scream: trapped between the animal immediacy of infancy and the linguistic competence of maturity, and unable to avail himself of either, the protagonist can only suffer silently. 

^

 

Comments (22)

dannyno
  • 1. dannyno | 19/11/2013
I guess it's the lyrics parade which has:

"And it's time for the note, see it
And it's time for the note, say it
And it's time for the note, read it
Futures and Pasts"

Nope, it's:

"I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't see it
I understand but I don't read it
Futures and pasts"

same as the other choruses!
bzfgt
  • 2. bzfgt | 23/11/2013
Thanks Danny, I never gave this song proper attention until tonight and I listened to it and confirmed what you say. I wonder, however, if the lyrics book has these lines? It would be odd for a transcriber to think she hears this, as it's the same as all the other choruses.

By the way, I finally "bought" the lyrics books--the Lough Press site said they sold them to me, but never took any money from me and seemingly never shipped the book. I chose "bank transfer," but they never took my information (they said "your order has been submitted"). Now I wonder if I should try to go back and enter a credit card number, but if their setup is that wonky it makes me nervous. Or are they out of business and the web page is just a remnant? In any case it puts me in a weird position since obviously the books are a necessity in my profession. But if you could check for me this one, I hope, last time, I'd appreciate it as always.
Martin
  • 3. Martin | 22/02/2014
The lyric book in question does have the chorus as Dannyo, above, says.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 17/06/2015
"I was in a sleeping dream
When a policeman brought my mother home
By the window I didn't scream
I was too old for that

I was in a drunken dream
The pubs were closed
It was three o'clock
At the bottom of the street it seemed
There was a policeman lost in the fog"

I guess the assumption tends to be that the narrator is the same person (MES?) in both verses. And that works. But what if it isn't? What if the second verse is from the perspective of the narrator's mother?

And in any event, why has the policeman brought the mother home, and why would that cause screaming in a child, were they not "too old" to scream?

Has the mother been found drunk, or was she arrested, or what?

But there are other ways to see it. What if the mother has been out on a date with the policeman, for example? Or what if she picked him up while drunk when the policeman was lost (second verse), and has brought him back as a result?

If you were a child with a healthy disrespect for authority, seeing your mother come home with a policeman might indeed make you scream. I've tended to think that narrator would scream because he was upset. That's probably the most obvious interpretation. But it's not necessarily so,, and after all the mother has come home. Why would that make you scream, except maybe with shock or delight, or with horror because it's the police?
dannyno
  • 5. dannyno | 22/09/2016
"The pubs were closed
It was three o'clock"

Worth a note? Under the first world war Defence of the Realm Act 1914, pubs were restricted to 12:00-14:40 and 18:30-21:30. Obviously things liberalised over the years, but it wasn't until the 1988 Licensing Act that (most) pubs were allowed to open from 11am to 11pm, rather than having to close for the afternoon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_licensing_laws_of_the_United_Kingdom#History
bzfgt
  • 6. bzfgt | 15/10/2016
Wow, 11pm? That sounds horrible.
dannyno
  • 7. dannyno | 15/10/2016
Things have liberalised since then and pubs can now stay open much longer.
dannyno
  • 8. dannyno | 15/10/2016
So note 2 isn't quite right - I'm not saying the pubs *now* close at that time.
dannyno
  • 9. dannyno | 15/10/2016
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_licensing_laws_of_the_United_Kingdom#Changes_since_2005
dannyno
  • 10. dannyno | 06/02/2017

The pubs were closed
It was three o'clock
At the bottom of the street it seemed
There was a policeman lost in the fog


On Sunday 6th January 1977, PC John Cameron (aged 27) of Radcliffe, was killed when his patrol car collided with a lorry, overturned and caught fire, in thick fog at the Heap Bridge junction of the M66 and M62, near Bury. He and his companion (who was injured but survived and marked 40yrs service in 2011) in were driving to be part of motorway fog patrols.

Could this have been in MES's mind?
dannyno
  • 11. dannyno | 07/02/2017
"Lost" as in "killed" rather than "lost" as in "missing" or "disorientated", you see.
bzfgt
  • 12. bzfgt | 11/02/2017
Oh, I see, all right. All too clearly...
dannyno
  • 13. dannyno | 04/09/2017
In a letter to Tony Friel dated 24 November 1976 (Friel briefly published a selection online a few years ago), MES says:


Here is the chorus from a song i am currently working on. I have many fragments but cannot seem to fit them into a complete whole:

"I understand but I don't see it
Futures and pasts"

I think it will be one of my best. The music must be good dear T- I was thinking of a thrash out on gtr., with loping bass runs that you are so good at and that Doug Yule plays excellently on 'Live '69'.
Guy Reid-Brown
  • 14. Guy Reid-Brown | 03/02/2018
Sadly, it was only Mark's passing - and synchronous events that surrounded it - that got me interested in The Fall; the fact that I have only reached this stage of the website - first album - shows how little I know - but this is making a great deal of sense to me and especially this Lyric - many thanks for this invaluable website, which I am very much enjoying, as I am not at all good with understanding abstract language. This is a truly noble endeavour!
bzfgt
  • 15. bzfgt (link) | 17/02/2018
Better now than never, Guy! I didn't get into the band until around 2012 myself; the important thing is you've found them now.
Karlb
  • 16. Karlb | 14/09/2020
Just watched Doctor Who seaon 1 episode 1 this weekend. The Unearthly Child. The episode begins with a policeman wandering through a fog outside a scrapyard, just as the church bells chime 3 in the morning. Its before we see the Tardiis has materialsed.To be absolutely certain I googled and found the script. Its definitely 3am.
dannyno
  • 17. dannyno | 30/09/2020
Comment #16. I enjoy the connection, although the policeman in Doctor Who is not lost, but I wonder how MES would have seen that episode?

He was six when it was first broadcast, and it wasn't shown again until 1981. There wasn't even a novelisation until 1981 and it wasn't on video until 1990. I guess there might have been a clip or something.
Useless
  • 18. Useless | 14/11/2020
Among one of the first 3 songs written by Smith:

Can you remember what the first thing was that you wrote, what it was
about?

"I remember writing three songs. I wrote 'Futures And Pasts', 'Oh!
Brother' and 'Repetition'. 'Oh! Brother' was older than when it came
out."
dannyno
  • 19. dannyno | 15/11/2020
dannyno
  • 20. dannyno | 08/02/2021
I wonder if the policeman lost in the fog was subsequently promoted to Inspector and also got lost in the fog of Spectre Vs. Rector?
Ray Pyne
  • 21. Ray Pyne | 26/10/2021
Don't know if MES liked Kerouac, but here's a quote from Desolation Angels where Jack is describing his only visit to London in the '50s: "..as I walked thru the fogs of Chelsea looking for fish n chips a bobby walked in front of me half a block, just vaguely I could see his back and the tall bobby hat, and the shuddering poem occurred to me: “Who will strangle the bobby in the fog?” (for some reason I dont know, just because it was foggy and his back was turned to me and my shoes were silent soft soled desert boots like the shoes of footpads)"
Adam Brain
  • 22. Adam Brain | 15/03/2024
Growing up at the same time as MES I always though the pubs shuntting at 3 was relating to the afternoon time. The Policeman in the fog, part always had me thinking about a tv programme called Dixon of Dock Green , which had in the open credits/sequence a policmen lurking in the mist

Add a comment