Origin of Love

Track 2 on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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Everyone who encounters it loves the musical and film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but “Origin of Love” in particular has become something of a classic and a standard in its… Read More

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Origin of Love Lyrics

When the earth was still flat
And the clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky
Sometimes higher

Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs
They had two sets of arms
They had two sets of legs
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked while they read
And they never knew nothing of love
It was before the Origin of Love

The Origin of Love

And there were three sexes then
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back
Called the children of the sun
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son

The Origin of Love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer
Like I killed the giants"
And Zeus said, "No
You better let me
Use my lightening like scissors
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards"
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle
Gonna cut them right up in half"
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane
To scatter us away
In a flood of wind and rain
And a sea of tidal waves
To wash us all away
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping 'round on one foot
And looking through one eye

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two
You were looking at me
I was looking at you
You had a way so familiar
But I could not recognize
Cause you had blood on your face
I had blood in my eyes
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine

That's the pain
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart
We called it love
So we wrapped our arms around each other
Trying to shove ourselves back together
We were making love
Making love
It was a cold dark evening
Such a long time ago
When by the mighty hand of Jove
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures
It's the story of
The Origin of Love
That's the Origin of Love

About

Everyone who encounters it loves the musical and film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but “Origin of Love” in particular has become something of a classic and a standard in its own right, covered by high-profile artists like Rufus Wainwright.

In the film, Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) writes the song about her relationship with the rock star Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt). Most of the lyrics, however, aren’t explicitly autobiographical. Instead, they draw on Greek mythology, specifically, a tale recounted in Plato’s Symposium by the playwright Aristophanes.

The story recounts how there were once three races of human beings: one with two male heads, one with two female heads, and one with one of each head. These primordial beings were cut in half by the jealous Greek gods; thus, what we call love, dating, fucking, marriage (the whole shebang!), is an attempt to put ourselves back together with our other, ancient half.

“Origin of Love” avoids a Eurocentric perspective by incorporating gods from other world cultures (Viking, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Ancient Egyptian).