Let me know if I can add any ideas to your request. Email is a good idea. How about posting a letter to compliment your email? Let's put our heads together. He loves his fans and interacts with fans. You'll be great to interview Andrew.. Oh, do mention your radio work!!! And not to forget your hozier artwork. I'm rooting for you.
I just saw a hozier interview with a small RU-vid channel (@weinthecrowed) of about 500 subscribers. So I hope @HonorLuca can pull this off!! Fingers crossed 🤞❤
I was so excited to find that you made a video about this!!! I always love your perspective on his songs! As a queer person, I like to view this song through a queer lens. I equate the line “be as you’ve always been” to the fact that queer people have always been a part of history and will always be a part of it as long as humanity continues. Especially in the current political climate it feels like people are trying to erase us. But if we keep fighting, keep loving, keeping being our true, openly queer selves, they’ll never get rid of us.
Lovely analysis, as always Honor. Your comments are always incredibly insightful. Personally, I think one of the most striking differences between the two versions of the song comes in the description that makes up the end of the line that begins "be like the rose that you hold in your hand, that will grow bold in..." The rose's environment in the acoustic version of this line is described as being "a barren and uneasy land." In the album version, it is a "barren and desolate land." That one word traces the movement from the unease and uncertainty of impending destruction in the acoustic, to the album version, which looks out over the devastation of what that unease anticipated. And yet, as much as it is a reflection of how the song developed in concert with the situations that it was responding to, it is also an invocation of how much hope Andrew has for the future. Even in what has gone from an uneasy land to a desolate wasteland, there is hope for the rose of humanity to bloom and grow bold.🌹
Love the analysis, as usual. It's always fascinating to hear how someone's interpretation might differ from your own, especially when they can draw parallels with other bits of art, history, etc. that you're not familiar with. That quote about wildflowers is gorgeous and matches the song so well! I love the album's rock version, but this one has such a different, beautiful tone. Both songs are about rebelling against awful things by loving someone through it all, but to me the album version has more anger/passion/despiration about the specific atrocities and this acoustic version focuses on the comfort/intimacy/peace part of it. This one also has fewer specific mentions of what the hard times might be and it makes it feel timeless and endlessly applicable IMO. It's not like the album one is just a 2016 time capsule since a lot of the listed tragedies and anxieties are unfortunately relevant today and were relevant for people throughout history (flooding, starving, the end of the world, refugees being turned away, finding no afterlife to welcome you after all of this, etc) but "true to the time and the place you've been given" is even more universal, lol. Anyway, I wanted to say I like your eyeliner! Excellent colour choice to go with your hair and eyes :D
Yet again Hozier making me question everything. First by making his statement of surrendering to the darkness rather than seeking the light, then he said once that even Jesus had been an atheist at least for one moment and NOW he's saying that what Eve did by eating that apple was a gift of freedom rather than a punishment for life???!!!?!?!1!1!! Simply blown away by this man
i immediately thought of you when i saw the australia/new zealand tour announcement! i hope you have the best time 😊 i will see him on the 23rd at lollapalooza brasil AND he will release an ep the day before 😭😭
This is my favourite song analysis you've done so far! 'Be' has always been one of my most played Hozier songs, i think he's at his best when making songs with religious/mythical themes.
This. Was. FABULOUS 🖤 I absolutely love your analysis videos! You always bring such sincerity, insight, and passion for the subject matter. This is probably in my top 10 favorite Hozier songs, and I was so excited to see this acoustic release!
I wonder if the second unreleased track from the special edition of Wasteland baby is another version of a song that is already on the album or if it'll be a completely unheard song? Apocalypse era Hozier is my weakness, I'm praying for an unheard song 🥺🙏
Although I also love the album version, the tone of this acoustic version works for me on such a deeper level and I'm still trying to understand why. I think it might be because it's a "sweeter" kind of rebellion than the angst of the other version. Or maybe not even a rebellion at all, but an acceptance that this is the choice you made and the one you always would have made, because you're you: "that freed the first man and will do so again." Not even " would do so again," but "WILL." It's certain. I've been encountering a common theme more and more lately in a lot of media (books like Slaughterhouse Five, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, even the movie Past Lives). It's the somewhat paradoxical idea that our entire lives and all our choices can be both determinate AND still worthwhile and valuable. Whether or not our every action is predetermined, we still have the opportunity to live through each moment, to take each action and experience the road that it leads us down. For someone to then say, as Hozier is saying with this version, "This you, this person you are and always would have become. That's what I want. Be there and just as you stand." What could be more comforting and beautiful to hear than that?
Oh gosh I absolutely love your videos so so much. I have a really hard time analysing songs myself, but hearing you talk about them I feel like I’m finally understand the meaning behind the lyrics. Anyways this was a joy, thank you!
Loving the polka dots!! He's full of surprises and I'm here for it. Personally I feel we're regressing at an alarming rate. Now is the time where we must ask ourselves which side of the wall suffers that cost? A fan in Eden🍎
Just thought I’d add something at the end that I feel like is misunderstood about Ireland. Ireland was always able to grow crops! Our famine wasn’t a real famine it was a genocide. We had crops but England exported them all and only let us eat the potato crop so when that crop failed we had nothing else to eat, because England wouldn’t let us eat any of our other crops!
Absolutely! Unfortunately I didn't chose my words quite right. What I was referring to by 'marginal land' was the fact that the Irish people were forced to try and grow their own food on land that was not fit for use because the fertile land was claimed by the english.
I'll be seeing our friendly irish giant in a couple of weeks here in Brazil, at Lollapalooza, and just saw he'll be heading your way soon!!! Can't wait to see your thoughts (and possibly vlog?) about his show ❤
I think the album version feels indignant almost, like feeling a swelling of heavy emotions. The acoustic version feels more like the calm before the storm, the sort of resignation of feeling troubled but not knowing what to do about it yet.
Just a bit more context to " the femine and marginal land" The land is fertile. Ireland is an agricultural country. It was producing food for export to Britten. Ireland was exporting crops and food during Gorta Mór " The Great Hunger" Ships sailed out of the irish ports throughout the great hunger period. Irish land was owned by the british landlords and we had no control over our crops😢 The potato blight was only one small factor of the femine that killed over one million people. one million migrated. 😢
