Plateau

I'm going to take the approach of understanding poetry which uses four categories. Plain sense, tone, feeling, and intention.

Beginning with the title "Plateau". A plateau is not a peak nor is it mega high. It is quite high. It also means a state of little or no change. This meaning is more negative.

The use of "hand" instead of people is interesting. A hand can a mean a worker. "has scaled", obviously means has climbed. It has an added meaning of has weighed or measured. "The grand old face of the plateau" is clearly positive and sounds like admiration and a challenge.

The other references e.g. "Holy ghosts and talk show hosts are planted in the sand / to beautify the foothills and shake the many hands", must all be referential, all symbolic. The illusions of religion, television, which are also unstable, temporal (sands of time), shallow (not much grows in sand), cosmetic, decorative, entertaining, distracting but also gratifying.

"A bucket and mop" are clearly for cleaning, but again, must be symbolic. Cleaning what? Illustrated book about birds. Some kind of guide to help understand the world maybe as it is. Why scared? Too much information. Birds are also a symbol of souls, of the dead.

Who needs action when you got words. What is this? A reference to complacency a reference to freedom or ideals etc being a dead letter. The state of being so caught up in discussions, thoughts and talk that we do not act any more. There is strong irony here. It might refer to personal life or to society. Some important things are just never done.

Third verse: finished with the mop then you can stop etc. Refers to satisfaction from some kind of useful action, however simple, however commonplace and unglamorous. Nothing is hard if done willingly, it can even be enjoyable to do something that is useful.

Last verse: again, "many a hand scanning around looking for the next plateau". Sense of restlessness of dissatisfaction. "However, others decided it was nowhere except for where they stood". Some people prefer to look into themselves.

"Those were all just guesses wouldn't help you if they could". The impossibility of really getting to the bottom of the sense of things.

Tone (that is the music) is plodding and hypnotic. This gives a sense of labour, hard work drudgery.

Felling is communicated perhaps more by Kurt Cobain's voice which becomes very emotional and intense almost hysterical in the chorus. The feeling conveyed by the words is surreal almost absurd and of course enigmatic and obscure.

The voice's intensity in the chorus conveys disbelief and anguish. That is, after all the hard work of scaling the plateau what is found on top is so banal, so confusing, so unsatisfying. The voice returns to its normal pitch in the following verse when the work has been done and satisfaction is expressed.

Given the amount of symbolism in the words, the intention of the song seems to be to wish to explain reality and interpret life. Is it a search for inner peace, salvation, knowledge, ideals, meaning, or perhaps even just a wish to get high? The latter is unlikely because there are just too many other symbols.

Is all we can expect from life practical work, the need and the chance to maintain some order and cleanliness in our personal lives, in society? i.e. practicalities and some management? Probably!