A word about the hurdy gurdy first, this strange instrument we hear all through the song.
It's an instrument that exists since the 12th century. It was heard all through Europe since then up to the 19th century, in the streets as well as at some Royal Courts. Popular dances was played by it while composers such as Vivaldi and Mozart wrote music for it.
I made a little search on the subject because this instrument plays a big part in the ambiance of the song which to my ears sounds as coming from way back in the past.
It had never come to my mind, before I read it somewhere, that it was about a homeless guy.
When I hear that song I can't help seeing in my mind, as some sort of a memory from very old times, a lonely roamer in a desert Irish or Scottish moor, under a tormented autumn sky.
So, I've just made my little search about the hurdy gurdy, this ancient instrument that was so popular and easy to use that Middle Age beggars, our now days homeless guys, could play music in the streets with it. Fine.
The lyrics now.

"My eyes seek reality, my fingers seek my veins" : the man is seeking for truth, with his eyes, ok, and with his fingers… huh ! His veins being associated for me to "reality", his veins : where's his blood, what keeps him alive, so what's real.
But seeking veins that way, I admit, it first makes think of an addict or of someone in a suicidal mood.

"There's a dog at your back step, he must come in from the rain" : dogs are said to be faithful to their owners, even to the worst ones, intelligent… but blindly faithful. Why am I writing this?
So, a dog is waiting at the back step, all wet in the rain, wet dogs can stink so much… At the back step, not the front one, not where you show up when you're a nicely dressed visitor but from where you get out the trash out of the house.
Instead of really seeking shelter, like under a tree or a porch, the dog is standing in the rain, waiting for the door to open. He could wait for long, he doesn't care, he stays focused on his owner's door, no matter how long it takes, this is what he knows will open, this is the only shelter he can think of, the only one that really exists in his mind. And this dog looks like a metaphor for the guy himself, if needed to say.

"I fall cause I let go, the net below has rot away": the man doesn't care for anything anymore, he has "let go" of his own self, stop caring for himself, he falls because letting go this way means saying "f**k you" to everything and everyone including yourself. It's not a relief, a liberation, it's a denial, it's turning your back on people and on your own self.
For me, the "net below" stands for this self-respect that keeps us from spitting at our own face for the ugly things we've done. His has rotten because he has let it withered. This can happen when you find yourself unable to forgive yourself for all those bad deeds, when you judge and condemn yourself for ever for what you've done.
Then, there's nothing worth anymore, especially not you. You let your self-respect decaying and you fall.

"The trash fire is warm": ok, that's clearly about a homeless guy, I was just not paying attention.
People who live in the streets have only trash to burn, they literally live on trash, not only to get warm but to eat, to get dressed.

"But nowhere safe from the storm": no shelter, you can leave everything behind, even live on trash but then you have no hold on anything anymore, you depend on the weather to keep you dry, you depend on charity to get a shelter, any kind of storm can get you at any time. It's true for each one of us only most of us tend to adapt to the situation and seek a shelter, we don't stay in the rain at a door that is not being opened.

"And I can't bear to see what I've let me be so wicked and worn" : so, there's some hope !
He's lost hold on everything including him: he's moved by his anger, by his disgust for everything but he's aware he's become his own shadow, aware of what he's done to himself by letting rot his net and he can't stand it anymore, he's on the edge. He has tasted enough of it, maybe time has come to make a choice, to get up and stand again.
The simple fact of being able to see what he's turned into shows his potential to change into something else, it means he can see what he could be, not only what he could have been in the past but what he could do now to change.

"So as I write to you of what is done and to do": so he's writing this to someone (the owner of "the back step"), he's opening himself probably to someone who knows him well, who knew him well, someone he still cares about and wants to explain himself to.
I feel he's trying to heal their relationship by getting things clear between them. They may have hurt each other. He's talking about what they have done and try to move on from it by talking about what's to do now.

"Maybe you'll understand and won't cry for this man": this person he's writing to could still cry for him, in spite of this man he has become. It seems logical to imagine that someone who loved him would do that, someone he loved but may have deceived, hurt and turned away from, not to deceive, hurt anymore.

"'Cause low man is due": depression, this fonction, part of us, I'd say, that brings us low, down, inside.
The low man in him brought him there, he's beginning to detach himself from him, to understand the process.

"Please forgive me": the "low man" is due but the guy is not hiding behind this, he knows he's responsible for what he did. Reconciliation is showing up on the road. It's quite hard to forgive a person who didn't ask for forgiveness. Once it's asked, especially between two people who care for each other, it's as if it was already given.

"My eyes seek reality, my fingers feel for faith": it's clearly moved since the beginning.
His eyes are still looking at the world, trying to see it as it it but something else appeared : the man who was seeking his veins became aware of the existence of something else than "reality", than this material world, something that can only be felt, as something we seek in the dark, not seen with the physical eyes : faith.

"Touch clean with a dirty hand, I touch the clean through the waste" : he seems to have found what can't be corrupted.His hands are dirty from the trash he lives on but I'd say his inner hands are clean, they are still true, still pure, they are still moved by honesty.
This can allow him to uncover outside what he's uncovered inside: through the waste, among the trash, what's rotten, he touches what's been preserved because incorruptible.

"So low the sky is all I see": it's getting dark again. Things are getting better but… Clouds are still covering the sun. The eyes seeking reality find themselves stopped by the sky, that's their limit. All the reality is not visible. A low sky is an invitation to look inside for what we seek.

"All I want from you is forgive me": this makes me think of the dog staying waiting at the door, focused on it, obsessed with it. The man has asked for forgiveness as the dog is asking for getting in. Forgiveness is the door.

"So you bring this poor dog in from the rain, though he just wants right back out again": the door finally opened. But the dog was not really looking for shelter, he just wanted the door to open.
He wants to go right back out, he wants his freedom, and he'll come back at the door to make it open again. He wants to play this sort of game because he wants a proof of this freedom from his owner.
He wants it to be shown to him: he has not found it in him so he's looking for it outside.

"And I cry, to the alley way, confess all to the rain": the man in his alley way, all alone, crying in the rain.
He has his" "freedom" but no one to cry to, and he feels like having to confess forever what he has done.

"But I lie, lie straight to the mirror": honesty gone, he's lying to his reflection, to himself.

"The one I've broken to match my face": again, rejection of himself, of what he sees of him, of the part he judges as not forgivable. He tried to cut himself from it, to "brake the mirror", to separate the good from the bad, to throw what he considers as unworthy to the trash.
And he's spending his life looking in the trash for his subsistence : looking for what he threw away, which is what he needs to become someone again.

May, 8th, 2001.

This forgiveness he's asking is what he hasn't found in him yet, just like this dog who wants to be shown his freedom.
Some homeless people became what they are not because of "bad luck" but because obsessed with the idea that jobs, money, duty, responsibilities are tying them. They can't stand it and end up saying "F**k" to it all.

Some persons, talking more generally here, are tied by the condemnation they put on themselves. They end up believing that what will open their prison's door is the forgiveness coming from the ones they've hurt. That's being tied to the past, letting it rule your present, when yet you feel deep inside that there are things that could be done now. But you believe in those prison's walls around you, a place where you can make nothing happen.
And so nothing happens, you go round in circles on and on, seeking another reality with your eyes when the one you are to find to brake free is in your heart.

One more thing about "the net below": I can find a positive meaning to this, I can also see this net as what is keeping us in our comfort/safety zone, as the limits we put around ourselves not to fall into situations we'll end up having to say "I feel stupid… I come undone" ("Mad Season", Matchbox 20, I've just seen the video on MTV).
This net gone, we really fall and encounter such situations but it can be to finally realize that there's no real ground to crash on. And that's the positive side of this "I don't give a shit" attitude : not caring for what's going to happen to us (to our ego), going only by our heart, by what is "clean", incorruptible, no matter what it takes.
All the rest will go to the trash anyway.

I have to come back to my "tormented autumn sky" now, this picture that comes to my mind when I listen to the song. I don't want to let that aside.
This picture has without a doubt been mainly inspired by the music itself, then by some pieces of lyrics that my intuition gathered in its own strange way, producing my own symbol for what the song means to me.
For example, I've just checked how to translate french "lande" (=moor) to find that an abandoned land is also called a waste, which also means desert.
"Waste" comes from Old Northern French: "wast" (which comes from Latin "vastus") = desolate, waste, all this giving some sense to my "desert Irish or Scottish moor"…
Now, don't tell me I have the wrong lyrics again and that it's "waist" and not "waste"… as I've read it somewhere… I wonder how this could make sense…

And here's a little "coincidence": the word of the day (a mail I receive everyday from Wordsmith) is "maverick" = a person independent in thought and action, an unbranded animal.

For those of you who have read the Lord of the Rings it might be now possible to understand how I can associate Low man's lyric with this book, the image of a lonely roamer in a desert moor being a good way to shortly picture Aragorn's tribulations.
And why do I see an Irish or Scottish landscape ? I've only seen pictures of those places. As far as I know, those are the only places in Europe -and it has to be Europe because of this "European sound" of the hurdy gurdy- that to me exhale such feelings of loneliness, harshness, and yet beauty, similar to the ones exhaled by the song.

And to end up here, I dedicate those lines to my dad from whom I received a very nice letter two days ago.

May, 9th, 2001.