memes

Hmmm…

Gabriel is my favorite artist and Genesis is my favorite band. I looked over other people’s reasoning for this interpretation, and it doesn’t seem 100% right to me.

I think the foremost metaphor in the song is about willful subjugation to religious/spiritual ideals and aspirations, so much so that the believer constantly crawls on their hands and knees in the foolish hope that it will bring them to a higher place spiritually, but these acts only impair them in both the Earthly and Heavenly realms. The references to climbing are about aspirations for a spiritual ascension, and the references to birth are about religious rebirth that puts the foolish believer right back to where they started without any progress made. The believers must “get in” to the highest echelon of piety/aether/magnificence “to get out” of mortal rebirth/suffering/existence/banality. This would track with Gabriel’s history of personal spiritualism and religious references, as well as the self-discovery theme of the album. The descriptions of scenery are to evoke how the environment/world/universe is lush and royal yet the believers themselves are tiny and insignificant. The album also intentionally makes constant leaps between settings and themes, which would make the very direct “Counting Out Time” unlikely to precede a song that is also sexual in nature. And when Gabriel sings about sex, it usually lacks subtlety.

Ascending the staircase to the next song, “The Chamber of 32 Doors”, Rael encounters those who incorrectly believe themselves to have found enlightenment and who seek to peddle their maligned ideologies to others. However, only “Lilywhite Lilith” can find the way of truth due to her lack of arrogance (on account of her being blind and pure).

However, Gabriel is a fantastic poet and lyricist and loves a dirty joke. The sperm theory is plausible as a secondary metaphor, but in the context of the story, who or what is being fertilized/born? As this song follows Rael’s coitus, it would follow that it would be a progeny of Rael that would be birthed, yet this cannot be the case since the rest of the story follows Rael and acknowledges that the character the audience stays with is John’s brother.

I’d argue that, barring “Counting Out Time”, “Steam” is probably Gabriel’s most explicitly sexual song, mimicking “Sledgehammer” without as artful of symbolisms.

I thought the pet play song you linked to would be “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges.

There are also other more directly sexual songs by contemporaries. “So Deep Within You” by The Moody Blues, “I’m In You” by Peter Frampton, “Pearl Necklace” by ZZ Top, and many Frank Zappa songs, for example.