Faye Wong - Rilkean Heart

It has been a long time since I was so overwhelmed by a song and it’s lyrics.

An old friend tagged me to this song “Rilkean Heart”. It was performed by Faye Wong, aka Her Royal Highness, Asia’s Queen of Pop at her concert in Shanghai.

No one. No performer can do what she does – singing with minimal interaction with the audiences, stand still with hands on her hips throughout the song. Displayed through body language, she showed that she still own the stage.

Her voice brought back a lot of memories. Rilkean heart was originally a Cocteau Twins song. Faye had filled it with Chinese lyrics in one of her albums. It never occurred to me all these while that it was a covered song. 

I like the English lyrics better. They are very profound and intriguing. “Rilkean” refers to the Austrian Poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings, ideologies, history and characteristics.

The thing which makes me love Faye Wong is that she can still inject her own style into a song which already had a strong style of the original singer. She often gives covered song an extra edge.

For those who wanted to listen to the original version, here it is!

Rilkean Heart

Rilkean heart I looked for you to give me transcendent experiences
To transport me out of self and aloneness and alienation
Into a sense of oneness and connection, ecstatic and magical
I became a junkie for it
I come looking for the next high and I'm sorry I've been
putting the search on the wrong place

I understand that you're confused, feeling overwhelmed
Well that's a feeling state from then, the reality

With cleaning up my emotional life and getting in touch with myself
I'm beginning to ground myself in my own sense of being as an entity
One entity on the planet,
Become truly self reliant
And become connected with something beyond me
That is where I have to go
I'm so sorry I've been putting the search on the wrong place

You're lost and don't know what to do
But that's not all of you
That's your reality today
And that is all okay

I understand that you're confused, feeling overwhelmed
Well that's a feeling state from then, the reality

I'm lost I don't know what to do
It's not all on you
That's the reality today
Right now it's all okay

I understand that you're confused
Feeling overwhelmed
Love's a feeling straight from then
The reality