Two Librans

There was two Librans sat on a hill (1)
And one always exiting to the easy gate (2)

Exit to two years to be perfect

Two Librans reflect
Two Librans high and low in mind
To Oprah Winfrey
She studied bees
Studied bees down
Two Librans (3)

War

The muggings 
Dressing a soldat (4)
Nelson in Timor (5)
Tolstoy in Ch-Chechnya (6)

You will reflect on wastage

Two Librans reflect
Two Librans high and low in mind
To Oprah Winfrey
She studied bees
Studied bees down
Two Librans

Exit to two years to be perfect

Two Librans reflect
Two Librans
The miracles on blonde September (7)

Back to the lick back to the deviant

 The Cambodian Cambodian 

(8)

1. Libra is the seventh astrological sign of the Zodiac. The sun currently transits the constellation Libra between October 31 and November 16. However, due to the precession of the equinoxes, Western astrology, which was codified centuries ago, still considers a LIbran to be someone born between September 23 and October 22. Libra is Latin for scales (of the weighing, not the piscine, variety), and the sign traditionally represents fairness, justice, and reflection, the last of which is mentioned several times in the song.

Dan: "In Dick Witts' 1993 book, Nico: the Lives and Lies of an Icon, this line appears: 'Jackson Browne had been born in Germany exactly ten years later than Nico. Two Librans.' Given Witts' and Nico's walk-on parts in Fall history, maybe MES read the book." 

The walk-on parts are as follows (again from Dan): "Nico lived in Prestwich for a time, and shared a house with MES' friend John Cooper Clarke. For a while her backing band included including ex-Fall personnel Una Baines and Martin Bramah. And she was managed by Alan Wise...MES mentions that he knew her in his Vice interview with John Doran. Witts was one of the founders of the Manchester Musician's Collective, under whose auspices The Fall played their first gig. He contributed to the 'Messing Up the Paintwork' conference in 2008, and his paper appeared in the subsequent book. Witts also founded the band The Passage, which Tony Friel joined when he left The Fall."

The music was written by Neville Wilding.

^

2. A fragmentary 1927 story by H.P. Lovecraft entitled "The Descendant" contains the following lines:

"He would travel leagues to follow up a furtive village tale of abnormal wonder, and once went into the desert of Araby to seek a Nameless City of faint report, which no man has ever beheld. There rose within him the tantalising faith that somewhere an easy gate existed, which if one found would admit him freely to those outer deeps whose echoes rattled so dimly at the back of his memory."

Mark E Smith has frequently decalred himself an avid reader of Lovecraft, so it is possible this phrase stuck in his mind at some point (thanks to nairng from the Fall online forum).  

And, Dan tells us, "it's worth knowing that historically an "easy gate" or "lazy gate" (or "patent gate") is a kind of gate it is possible to pass through without having to get off a horse or get out of a coach or vehicle."

^

3. Oprah Winfrey (who is, since you are wondering, an Aquarius) is not, to my knowledge, a student of bees, although Oprah did apparently have the cast of the 2008 movie The Secret Life of Bees on her program (eight years after "Two Librans" was released), and she was the voice of one of the bees in Bee Movie (again, several years too late to be relevant). There is also a fake youtube video--again, alas, post-dating the song--of Oprah releasing a swarm of bees into the adoring faces of her audience. It's not clear whether the "she" who is said to have studied bees is meant to be Oprah or one of the titular Librans, whom we may imagine making a guest appearance on the show.

Peter Bee points out that the bee is a symbol of industry and industriousness (for which reason the beehive is the state symbol os Utah):

"From ancient times, bees and their beehives have been important symbols and elements in almost every culture on Earth. The very term “industry,” from an ancient perspective, referred to the employment of a very large number of men, tens of thousands in some instances. Individually, each man had his set task and together they accomplished much more than any one person could possibly do. Thus the beehive is that perfect emblem of the power of industry where the group works together toward a common goal..."

And Dan finds that the bee is employed as a symbol of Manchester (birthplace of the industrial revolution) and appears on the coat of arms of Salford...

^

4. Soldat means "soldier" in German, a language MES often (correctly or, more often, not) incorporates into his lyrics, and also has the same meaning in Russian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, French, Catalan and Romanian. See note 6.

^

5. "Nelson" may be Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), a British naval hero whose name here may perhaps be taken as a synechdoche for British militarism or imperialism. It does not seem likely that Nelson ever set foot on the island of Timor, which had been under Dutch, Portugese, Indonesian and, briefly, Japanese control before East Timor gained independence in 2002 (West Timor remains under Indonesian administration). The island, particularly the Eastern half, has had a long history of struggle against colonial powers, and the line "Nelson in Timor" should probably be read as having more of a metaphorical or visionary intent rather than aiming at historical accuracy.

On the other hand (thanks here to Gnomus) the reference could be to Nelson Mandela, who in 1997 met with his fellow Nobel laureate and Timorese activist Jose Ramos-Horta, although he had been criticized for dealing with Indonesia and not proscribing their conduct in Timor, as this article explains: Mandela, East Timor meeting shrouded in secrecy . 

And Dan points out that the HMS Nelson also made a voyage to Timor in 1825, when she was sunk by pirates...

The year before the song debuted, a three year old boy in East Timor named Nelson Soares lost his leg and nearly died when an air-dropped food package landed on him (thanks to Art Simak). 

^

6. Count Lev (Leo) Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and is, of course, considered one of the premier figures in world literature for his novels. Tolstoy served in the Russian army in the Caucusus region, and he lived in Chechnya in the 1850s.

There is a Tolstoy museum in Chechnya, and it re-opened in December, 2000, eight months after this song saw it's debut. But it was in the news earlier in the year, including an article in the Christian Science Monitor dated March 9--two weeks before the appearance of "Two Librans"--headlined "Lone Soldier Defends Tolstoy in Chechnya" (see "Dressing a soldat," note 4 above). The museum was seen as a symbol of Russian imperialism, and the Chechnyan government defunded it in 1997, but its director, the "soldier" of the headline, went to a lot of trouble, sans wages, to preserve its collection until the Russians entered the region and re-established the musem in 2000. The building in which the museum is housed was originally a schoolhouse named for the author.

Tolstoy's short novel Hadji Murat depicts the struggle between Russia and Muslim Chechnya at that time and, of course, this struggle continues to this day. "Tolstoy" could perhaps be considered a kind of term complement to "Nelson": in that case, a surface reading would suggest that, while the latter name conveys militarism, the former conveys pacifism, although this polarity is of course flipped when we consider the specific context. in any case, if we go that route we may also possibly detect the suggestion of cultural, rather than military, triumphalism and the hegemony of Christian and Western ideas in the name "Tolstoy" as well as the obvious connotations re: Russian military incursions in Chechnya.

In general, the two Librans theme here suggests a pair of opposites balancing the "scales": in addition to Nelson and Tolstoy we get "high and low in mind," and the close proximity of "muggings" and "dressing a soldat," which suggests someone dressing the wounds of an injured man. In that case, we could group these themes as follows: Nelson/low in mind/mugging, Tolstoy/high in mind/dressing. Certainly there is something like this at work in the lyrics, but how precise the symbolism is meant to be is unclear (and again, the associations are unstable, as the pacifist Tolstoy in context also symbolizes militarism and imperialism). But if we are to persist with this sort of thing it is necessary to add that the duality appears not just between, but also within, the "twins," and therefore two Librans adds up to four sets of ideas, symbols, or character traits. In that case Tolstoy will have to bear some of the onus of the muggings and perhaps also, then, Nelson must dress a wound or two.

From a contemporaneous Wall Street Journal article:

"With all my strength and with the aid of a cannon, I shall assist in destroying the predatory and turbulent Asiatics," Tolstoy wrote in a letter to his family from the front in Chechnya in 1852.

But I'll let the "soldat"/museum director have the last word:

Asked whether it is appropriate to maintain a museum celebrating a man whom many Chechens view as a Russian imperialist, Zagibov argues that the author should not be viewed in such a politically fractious light.

"Tolstoy is not just a Russian writer, he belongs to all of humanity." he says. "Tolstoy was a pacifist. He would have opposed this war too."

^ 

7. Dan tracked this one down:

The Jewish-Greek poet Joseph Eliyia wrote a poem called "September" ("Poems", 1944) which includes the lines:

"In the paradise of the seasons, my thirsty soul pines
Til she finds you, cool blonde September
Torrid heat expires in your breast, 
And your dawns are voluptuous, dewy, miracle of miracles".  

From Sean: "Especially given the references to violence throughout the song, I read “blond september” as an allusion to/mutation of “Black September,” the terrorist group most infamous for the killings at the 1972 Olympics." Black September originally refers to the armed conflict between the PLO (Palestinian LIberation Organization) and the Jordanian military in September 1970, after Israel took control of the West Bank and the PLO started operating against Israel in Jordan and threatening the Jordanian monarchy. That same year, the Palestinian terror group of the same name was founded, and they assasinated the Jordanian Prime MInister, and also took eleven Israeli atheltes hostage and then murdered them during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Paul Go submits:

1st September 1939 marks the Nazi invasion of Poland, and is often seen as the start of the relatively famous WWII. The Nazis promoted a false notion of a superior blonde Aryan race. I suspect "Blonde September" refers to this.

^

8. The Lyrics Parade has "The Cambodian Cambodian [rip]" (square brackets usually indicate that the Parade is uncertain about a word). MES does indeed make a sound like "rip" here, but to me it just sounds like a variant on the noise he makes to indicate to the band that the song is ending, which sometimes comes out more like "hup!" or "whup!", and not a lyric proper.  

The demo version of Two Librans has different lyrics and, notably, Oprah Winfrey has not yet made an appearance:

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Two Librans: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 2000

Barnet transcribes:

Blackburn on the 22nd September 2002 

There was two Librans sat on a hill 
And both were contemplating their various knowledge
As in Aries
As in the Beatles
Two Librans

Two Librans sat on a hill
Over the long long days

Reflect down the long long days of mortal knowledge
Wanted to be on.
How long will I be on MTV? 
How long will the strawberry-coloured freckles surround the house of the ridiculous idiocy?

Two Librans sat on a hill
Reflect
Genuflect

The nightmare of blonde September
The nightmare of Tolstoy in Ch-Chechnya

Two Librans sat on a hill
Reflect
On the long long days
Two Librans sat on a hill
Over the long long days

["As in the Beatles"--possibly a reference to "Fool on the Hill"]