Psych! Nobody knows the lyrics. No one even knows what language it is–English? Scottish brogue? Gaelic? Esperanto? One of those languages twins teach each other?–or if it is even any language at all. The lyrics are practically pure sound poetry.
It also doesn’t particularly matter; “Carolyn’s Fingers” was the song that first broke Cocteau Twins in America, topped the Alternative charts back in Britain, and remained a fan-favorite till their 1997 breakup. The lyrics are irrelevant; the feeling that the song produces is sufficient. People become fans of this song based solely on how it made them feel–just as we do with songs that do have intelligible lyrics. We work out the details later.
Related: Alvin Dyer famously said that the Gospel is a feeling; and though his concept of the quick-baptizing “testifying and challenging missionary” has come in for plenty of push-back and well-merited criticism over the decades (particularly for how it impacted long-range retention rates), he still was not out of line to state the obvious–that conversion to the gospel comes solely from a feeling, not chains-of-logic or well-reasoned arguments so-called.
We begin with a feeling, because all we have are the sensory data of our feelings to go off of in the first place. That is all our five senses are, after all: conveyors of sensation, of feeling. Everything we perceive and know and think we know is based solely upon data provided by our sensory feelings; indeed, all of reality itself is experienced as a feeling. We work out the rest of the details from there. But we first begin with the feeling–we pay attention first and foremost to how something made us feel–because all else is tinkling cymbal and sounding brass.
The 1988 album that “Carolyn’s Fingers” appears on by the way, Blue Bell Knoll, is a reference to a mountain peak in southern Utah (in case you needed a tangential LDS connection to ground this discussion). But even if the album had been entitled Scottish Band Sings Incomprehensibly, I could still draw a direct Gospel connection to it, because the Gospel is no different: we converted–or remained members, whatever the case may be–because we first felt something, before we understood it. “I do not know the meaning of all things,” said no less than Nephi. Sometimes we never understand the Gospel; it remains as incomprehensible to us as “Carolyn’s Fingers.” The words were the least relevant part of the conversion process. We work out the details later. Even if we never understand anything else, we at least know what we once felt; and “if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?” reads Alma 5:26, and it’s a question still worth asking now. All else is tinkling cymbal and sounding brass.