Sleeping Beauty

You know in Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping Beauty goes to sleep
And the reason she goes to sleep is because she has parents who are quite old
So they're pretty desperate to have a child, like so many people are now
And they only have one child, like so many people do now
They don't want anything to happen to this child
‘Cause it's like, hey, it's a miracle
And she's the princess, we're not letting anything around her
So they have a big Christening party and they invite everybody
But they don't invite Maleficent, and Maleficent is the terrible mother, she's nature
The thing that goes bump in the night
She's the devil herself, so to speak
She's everything that you don't want your child to encounter
So the King and Queen say, "Well, we just won't invite her to the Christening."
It's like good luck with that, that's an eatable story
The mother who devours her child, by overprotecting him or her
Instead of being strengthened by an encounter with the terrible world
They're weakened by too much protection
And then when they're let out into the world, they cannot live

That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
(Here's a little story that must be told)

And they apologize to Maleficent when she first shows up
They say, well, you know they have a bunch of halfwitted excuses why they don't invite her
“We forgot” It's like, I don't think so
You don't forget something like that and she kind of makes that point, it’s right
The whole horror of life, you don't forget about that when you have a child, that's for sure
You might wish that it would stay at bay, but you do not forget about it
The question is, do you invite it to the party?
And the answer is, it bloody well depends how unconscious you want your child to be
And if you want your child to be unconscious, well then you have the added advantage that maybe they won't leave home
So you can take advantage of them for the rest of your sad life, instead of going off to find something to do for yourself
First, you can take revenge on them if they do have any impetus towards courage that you sacrificed yourself 30 years ago and want to stamp out as soon as you see it develop in your child
That's another thing that would be quite pleasant
Would be quite pleasant, would be quite pleasant
That's another thing that would be quite pleasant
Would be quite pleasant, would be quite pleasant
That's another thing that would be quite pleasant
Would be quite pleasant, would be quite pleasant
So that's what happens in Sleeping Beauty

[Chorus]
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
(Here's a little story that must be told)

Yeah, well none of this is pleasant, but nothing that happens in that story is pleasant
So Sleeping Beauty, she's naive as hell, they put her up in the forest, and have her raised by these goody two shoes fairy
And then the first idiot Prince that wanders by, she falls in love with so badly, that she has post-traumatic stress disorder when he rides off on his horse
That's what happens!
Then she goes into the castle, and she's all freaked out because she met the love of her life
Like five minutes
That's when the spinning wheel, that's the wheel of fate pops up and she pricks her finger
They try to get rid of all the spinning wheels
They try to get rid of all the wheels of fate with her pointed end, but she finds it, pricks her finger falls down unconscious
Well, she wants to be unconscious
And no bloody wonder she was protected her whole life
She's so damn naive, that her first love affair just about kills her
She wants to go to sleep and never wake up
Never wake up, never wake up
She wants to go to sleep and never wake up
So that's exactly what happens
And then she has to wait for the Prince to come and rescue her
Well you think, “How sexist can you get?”
That's a boneheaded way of looking at the story
Because the Prince isn't just a man who's coming to rescue the woman
The Prince also represents the woman's own consciousness

[Chorus]
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
That's the story of Sleeping Beauty
(Here's a little story that must be told)

Without that forward going courageous consciousness, a woman herself would drift into unconsciousness and terror
All she can do is lay there and sleep, like the sleep of the naive and damned
She has to wake herself up, bring her own consciousness, her own masculine consciousness into the forefront so that she can survive in the world, unless the woman is taken out of man, so to speak
Then she isn't a human being, she's just a creature and that's partly, what's embedded in this story
So you don't want to read it as a patriarchal, you don't wanna read anything that way