Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Origin of Love, in ASL

My interpretation of the song Origin of Love from the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Thanks again to Ron Painter - http://rmpalpha.livejournal.com - for some help in interpreting.

I made up two name-signs for it:
1. Thor - HAMMER with T
2. Zeus - LIGHTNING ending with S

For Ben.


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.x
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.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• asl
• american
• sign
• language
• song
• interpretation
• music
• Hedwig
• and
• the
• Angry
• Inch
• Origin
• of
• Love

[masterofunicycles]

Ummmmm, Might you explain what you're doing? Serious question... I don't get it, like... you study this?

[saizai]

No, but I used to. I just do this because it's fun.

If you mean what I'm doing from a technical perspective, see my "linguistic & interpretive analysis of an asl 'terp" vidseries.

[luckyalbatross]

I'm an ASL interpretation student and I have to interpret a song as a final project. Despite being a Hedwig fan I had never even thought to do OoL. Thanks for the interpretation!

[saizai]

Glad to help. Hopefully you'll be doing your own interpretation though and not just ripping off mine. ;)

And you should post it to YT when you do it...

[moskeetophreek]

the sign for making love is beautiful.

[saizai]

The one I did with ILYs is closer to 'making love' per se, the one with As is just 'being together'.

There are other signs of course.

[20saul09]

No one could ever "speak" a signed language ... lol! It's manual :D

[Jaguarzone]

I'm sorry, but I have to critique this. You need more facial expressions. You know as well as I do, at least I hope you know, that ASL is a very expressive language. I was just bored watching you because all you were doing was moving your hands. I mean, you are telling a story to the rhythm of a song. You NEED more facial expressions. It was very boring for me to watch.

[metalnotplastic]

I can't speak sign language, but you are awesome for doing this. I love this song.

[TAHSIN00HASAN]

u suck

[sarathelatteboy]

this is amazing.

[colinf89]

I loved this. I thought it was great. This is the song I base my life around and you did an amazing job. I don't know asl but omg you did awesome. I love you! You're freaking amazing. You rock keep it up.

[manosthess]

bravo u r so nice:)

[harper09]

Wow, this was beautiful.

[randygetsmail]

Thank you Sai... your measured, thoughtful, respectful and touching interpretation of this, one of my favorite songs ever, is a work of art. Although I know barely a handful of ASL words and am lucky to get all the letters, I would not need to watching this. I just hope you do more. Wig in a Box and Midnight Radio would be... just so awesome. Best to you and thanks again. ~R