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What are the emotions here?

WhitewaterWoman

WhitewaterWoman

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Help! I must identify the emotions in each of the three verses in the song below:

But my assignment for my next lesson has me baffled. I am supposed to identify the emotions in the three verses of the song “Green Eyes,” by Kate Wolf. I get it’s a love song, but further than that I am baffled. So, I’m asking for help.

Green Eyes by Kate Wolf

Every night we light the candle
that stands beside our bed.
Sometimes the flame’s too hot to handle.
That’s what you said, that’s what you said.
And you should know
because you built a fire in me and you made it burn.
You followed me watching every move, matching every turn.

Chorus:

Your green eyes don’t miss a thing.
They hold me like the sun going down.
warm me like a fire in the night
without a sound. Without a sound.

You were waiting till I heard
just as patient as that love light in your eyes.
You never threw away a word, nor ever talked in a disguise
I ought to know
You were a beacon to a sailor lost at sea.
I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me
so openly.

Chorus

First time I ever heard your laughter
brake loose inside and tumble out to me.
My heart knew it had found what it was after
and it came so easily.
And we should know
after all the years of the hard and heavy times
Now our days fly by like best friends’ story lines
Yours and mine.

Chorus

Here is a link to the song:

https://www.google.com/search?q=gre...#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:edc9d5db,vid:psXGzblg7Ws
So, what are the emotions in
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3

Any help would be much appreciated.
 
I wrote a longer post, but won't give the answer :) It feels like cheating. You might find it more helpful to read them out of order. Try reading them as verses 3, 1, 2. This way you can see the full growth of her emotions and awareness of them, making it easier to understand how they grew.

It was fun thinking about though. I love tracing viewpoints the way some people like building things, or understanding how a machine works.
 
Good luck with that. o_O I would never perceive emotional content from the written word. I might be able to guess at some sort of meaning, but I've never been good at interpreting symbolism, as is often found in poetry, literature, and song.
 
I would say it's about passion, love and trust. But trust isn't really an emotion, is it? I need a word for an emotion that decribes trust.
 
The only thing I ever get from Kate Wolf singing is near-panic to change the program. Is this a distraction from retirement? I used to have about a hundred emotions written out on a checklist to help me identify them, but nothing in Kate's range was on there. I learned to identify anger without the list first, because I would see a higher reading on my speedometer.
 
Mr. Stevens said:
I wrote a longer post, but won't give the answer :) It feels like cheating. You might find it more helpful to read them out of order. Try reading them as verses 3, 1, 2. This way you can see the full growth of her emotions and awareness of them, making it easier to understand how they grew.

It was fun thinking about though. I love tracing viewpoints the way some people like building things, or understanding how a machine works.
Click to expand...
It's not cheating if it helps me learn. Please reconsider. So I can consider?

The goal is to change how I sing. Not necessarily to determine the emotions. But being aspie that is not something I easily do.
 
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I am stumped. I think maybe she loves the one with green eyes, but beyond that I just don’t know.
 
Forest Cat said:
I would say it's about passion, love and trust. But trust isn't really an emotion, is it? I need a word for an emotion that decribes trust.
Click to expand...
Can you ascribe passion, love and trust to the different verses.

The point here is to sing each verse a bit differently based on a different emotion. My teacher thinks, for example, that the first verse has to do with people falling in love, the early stages. And the last verse is a stable longer term relationship.

I agree with the third verse, but not the 1st.

I think it is darker than that.
 
WhitewaterWoman said:
Can you ascribe passion, love and trust to the different verses.

The point here is to sing each verse a bit differently based on a different emotion. My teacher thinks, for example, that the first verse has to do with people falling in love, the early stages. And the last verse is a stable longer term relationship.

I agree with the third verse, but not the 1st.

I think it is darker than that.
Click to expand...

Now I doubt everything I said earlier. I was thinking 1 - passion, 2 - love, 3 - trust, long term relationship and such things.

But that's the thing about lyrics, people can get completely different things out of it because it's often so unclear and just hints at things. So I don't know, I could be way off. Maybe she's sarcastic and it's about someone she can't stand. Only the one who wrote it probably knows what it is about.
 
WhitewaterWoman said:
It's not cheating if it helps me learn. Please reconsider. So I can consider?

The goal is to change how I sing. Not necessarily to determine the emotions. But being aspie that is not something I easily do.
Click to expand...

Now I'm curious where Ella gets infidelity from, but this is basically what I wrote:

Verse 3: She is fulfilled. They have taken years to learn who the other is deeply and now their life is easier because of a deep intimacy. They basically share emotions--laughter moving from one to the other. This was a foundation to grow more unified, and now she's at peace.

Verse 1: She compares their love to a fire, because it's not something they control entirely but it must be tended. She appreciates that he cares enough to study her and see what pleases her, and this is how the relationship started. So she is grateful and also more aware of herself--that she could feel so strongly at someone doing this to her.

Verse 2: She is also grateful here, but in a different way. She appreciates his honesty and directness. I would guess that he was waiting for her to hear that this was honesty and directness--that she could trust him. Then later she could hear his laughter ring through her. He basically taught her to be vulnerable and helped give her a real humanity, so she was no longer lost. This leads to the fulfillment of her life and herself as a human being in verse 3.

It's about love as gratitude and realization.
 
For any song, why are we assuming each verse has a separate emotion? While for some songs this could be true, in other songs there can be changes of emotion within the verse and line even, if not sometimes just a general emotion or feeling conveyed throughout the same song. So, for those here who said, it's hard to tell by words alone, and as each reader of the lyrics can interpret things differently, like as in a poem, when certain literary elements are used, of course it makes sense then to listen to the singer sing the song, as that then gives more clues.

So, I listened to the song and read the lyrics, and my take on it is she starts off in the first verse singing "generally" about how she trusts/feels comfort with her partner despite all the difficulties they faced or she had because of the person that other is and the wisdom and character that that person has shown. Then the middle part says more specifically she finds solace in the truth of her partners green eyes, revealing her partner's patience, love for her, honesty, strength and nonjudgmental nature. The song ends with her summing up things that they became best friends through the difficulties because of that trust and love for each other, being who they were which fit their relationship.
 
There are no right or wrong answers here.

The assignment was to find (in myself) and then convey in music the emotion of each verse.

Since I know so little about emotions, I thought I’d ask for help.

Ella Spell, I do feel there is darkness in the first two verses, but I am not sure what they are.

Mr. Stevens what you write makes sense, thank you for elaborating.

I am going to print these out and think on them, and try them out as music. Thank you everyone.
 
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It's triggery for me so that was my first clue.

v1 -
~ Every night we light the candle
that stands beside our bed
Sometimes the flame’s too hot to handle
That’s what you said, that’s what you said
And you should know
because you built a fire in me and you made it burn
You followed me watching every move, matching every turn


~ Every night we lit the candle:
Candles are a symbol of hope and courage / loss / mourning
Every night -- she's emphasizing the passage of time
It is past tense "lit the candle", not present tense "we light ..."
She's saying they went through the motions of being together
She was faithful and kept lighting new candles or waiting up for him
Either she believed him, or she ignored her suspicions
She's incredulous that she was complicit for so long

She's tired of his BS, or she's mourning their relationship
She's thinking back on their conversations and putting the pieces together
She's evaluating his statements based on new information


~ You said the flame is too hot to handle.
That's what you said. That's what you said.
You should know:

Mixed tenses: Said / is
The flame is still burning for someone else
She's calling him out for making excuses
"You should know!"
It's all about him
"That's what you said. That's what you said" - He lied

The flame was so hot he couldn't resist it ... likely elsewhere
He blamed his hormones and lust
He would still come home to her, and light a new candle of hope
That means he would pretend to make a fresh start
She got his residual passion

One bedside candle doesn't make a flame that hot, like fire
The heat he "couldn't handle" was elsewhere
He couldn't couldn't handle or resist the temptation
"Couldn't handle it" also means he cracked, or slipped up
His partner found out

Maybe he desired them both
Either way he was duplicitous

If he didn't have a physical affair, it was emotional
In an emotional affair he would have built up "heat" for the other woman
Then he would use that "heat" in bed with her

You followed me, matching every turn -
He matched her moves in bed, he pretended to be in love
He watched her with jealousy despite being unfaithful himself
He made her feel like she was at fault
She's proving she did nothing wrong or he would have seen it

~ You built a fire in me and made it burn:
This is a YOU verse
She's looking at his role in what happened
She doesn't say THEY made a fire together
This is all on him

He orchestrated the affair step by step, like building a fire
He built her trust step by step as well with daily routines and normalcy
He fed her lines to keep their passion alive

You made it burn - he let her suspicion / jealousy grow over time
The fire is her anger / jealousy / resentment but also her love for him (pain)

It's all a metaphor for the fact she's been burnt by him and it hurts
Meaning: "You did this to me, and it's your fault" or "You made me love you"

The relationship and trust are burning down

-------------------

v2 -
~Your green eyes don’t miss a thing
They hold me like the sun going down
Warm me like a fire in the night
Without a sound. Without a sound


Green eyes = jealousy (Shakespeare)
He's smart and doesn't miss a detail
His eyes have controlled or deceived her because she trusted them
The sun going down - Relationship ending, time passing
They warm me without a sound - He kept a secret, didn't tell her
Sounds aren't supposed to "warm" us
She thought the silence was warmth but it was secrecy
warmth vs silence

Now he's asking forgiveness, so she sees his eyes as "warm"
She is torn whether or not to forgive him

~You were waiting till I heard
just as patient as that love light in your eyes
You never threw away a word, nor ever talked in a disguise
I ought to know
You were a beacon to a sailor lost at sea
I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me
so openly


This part is killing me
Now using some "I" statements instead of all YOU
Heard WHAT ... ?
He was waiting for her to find out
More passage of time until she heard through the grapevine
He didn't want to tell her himself

Just as patient as the love in your eyes -
He was manipulating her
All that time he looked at her lovingly, or he loved two people
She thought it was patience but it was cowardice on his part

You never threw away a word ... -
He never said more than he needed to, his words were measured

Nor talked in a disguise -
She should have known better because the signs were there
Starting to blame herself
I OUGHT TO KNOW - Again, I should have known, I do know
Guilt / shame / trauma

You were a beacon to a sailor
I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me so openly -


He was her beacon
She realises he was a beacon for other women too
He fooled everyone
People saw him as strong and they trusted him for their bearings
This is meant to be ironic


---------------

v3 -
~ First time I ever heard your laughter
brake loose inside and tumble out to me
My heart knew it had found what it was after
and it came so easily
And we should know
after all the years of the hard and heavy times
Now our days fly by like best friends’ story lines
Yours and mine


She's nostalgic and reflecting on their good times
She's trying to stop blaming herself
Torn between acceptance and pain

"we should know" -- instead of "I ought to know" in v2
She's holding him accountable

after all the years of the hard and heavy times
Now our days fly by like best friends’ story lines
Yours and mine

Another reference to time and the passage of years
Time makes her love him, but intensifies the betrayal
Years of hard and heavy times
She's contemplating her commitment, rationalising
Days fly by - Moving forward now instead of looking back
Best friends' story lines - No longer lovers
Best friends tell each other about their lust for others
They have a new dynamic
Yours and mine -
He has a story to share (betrayal)
She has a story too (what's she's been through)

Sorry, I can't listen to it but that's how I read the lyrics.
 
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Not a direct answer (because I can't do stuff like this easily either), but my advice would be try seeing what emotions do and don't fit into each line.
Google "Emotion Wheel", it will bring up images of various charts that you can use to narrow down emotions. They start with a general emotion in the centre, then from each sector it expands into more precise emotions.

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C...t=LxGNVshZywnw3D-8jEdsOA_vuvtMqFAITU1CeRITrSU
 
Woops. I can't get the video to play, but I suspect that I have confused Kate Wolf with Kate Bush.
 
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