Rings Of Saturn – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

We turn today to another song from Nick Cave’s 2016 album Skeleton Tree, called Rings of Saturn. This deeply mystical track mythologises the woman, the manifestation of her essential nature. The highly atmospheric elements throughout are congruent with the title, possessing an otherworldly feel, as though you’re being whisked away and left free-floating through space, in another time and dimension. Or, as Cave himself described it, ascending into the melancholy splendour of the cosmos.

When you listen to Rings of Saturn, you get a strong sense of the cryptic nature of the feminine, and you’re just going along for the magical ride through this lucid thought-stream. It presents the woman as a divine force, beyond explanation and beyond description. She just cosmically is.

And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
And this is what she does and this is what she is

Cave spoke about women in the album’s supplementary film, One More Time with Feeling, at around 37:41. His comments certainly seem to provide an insight into the thinking behind Rings of Saturn:

Women have more facets than men. Men are pretty much two dimensional. Women are like f&cking 3D. My wife is spectacularly 3 dimensional. But every time I try to get a handle on her and to pull her into focus, she shifts or changes and becomes someone else. Or worse she steps out of the frame entirely. And I’m left with a hovering ghost image which is burned on my retina. Like I’ve stared into a spotlight and closed my eyes. Eventually she steps back into the frame and I pull her back into focus, but she’s changed because she’s been out there communing with the dead.

In Nick’s own personal blog, The Red Hand Files, Cave responded to the question of what Rings of Saturn was about, but first caveated his response by saying: the lyrics are essentially improvised, they tend to be ambiguous, unguarded, and to a certain extent, beyond my control.

I’ll break down his response as follows, but it’s well worth reading his full response here:

In the first verse, the narrator is involved in a sexual encounter with a woman. In the second verse, the narrator abandons himself to the servitude of her imperial feminine potential. In the third, we see her as a mother, as she reinstates herself to the chosen function of her womanhood – the nurturer, the provider, the font of life.

Cave ends by describing the mother ascending into the melancholy splendour of the cosmos and “dangling herself from the rings of Saturn” – in recognition of both the joy and sorrow of womanhood.

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Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died after an accidental cliff fall at Ovingdean Gap in Brighton, England, in July 2015. At the time of Arthur’s death, Cave was partway through recording Skeleton Tree, the sixteenth studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

The boy you see in One More Time with Feeling at 51:07 is Nick Cave’s surviving son, Earl Cave, the twin brother of Arthur.

[Verse 1]
Upside down and inside out and on all eights
Like a funnel-web, like a black fly on the ceiling
Skinny, white haunches high and skyward
And her black oily gash crawling backwards across the carpet to smash all over everything
Her wet, black fur against the sun going down
Over the shops and the cars and the crowds in the town

[Chorus]
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
This is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
This is what she does and this is what she is

[Verse 2]
Her eyes that look at me through her rainy hair
Are two round holes where the air buckles and rushes in
Her body, moon-blue as a jellyfish
And I’m breathing deep and I’m there and I’m also not there
And spurting ink over the sheets, but she remains, completely unexplained
Or maybe I’m just too tongue-tied to drink it up and swallow back the pain
I thought slavery had been abolished
How come it’s gone and reared its ugly head again?

[Chorus]
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
And this is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
This is what she is and this is what she does
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
And this is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
Then this is what she does and this is what she is

[Verse 3]
And now she’s jumping up with her leaping brain
Stepping over heaps of sleeping children
Disappearing and further up and spinning out again
Up and further up she goes, up and out of the bed
Up and out of the bed and down the hall
Where she stops for a moment and turns and says
“Are you still here?”
And then reaches high and dangles herself like a child’s dream
From the ring of Saturn

References:
1. Genius Lyrics – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
2. What is the song ‘Rings of Saturn’ about? – The Red Hand Files