This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
sleeping late i hear the sad horns
of labor truck sigh
my neighbor walks by
high heels click dry
like half a proud horse downbrook
i hear somebody's babbling i mistook
for a cavalry whispering victory
to the sparks in their kindling
but but all their green wood's wet and unmet
as of yet by the gases of flame
pressing again the pending physics
of my passed down last name
living in the tear between two spaces condemned
in one of the many places
you're not i am
hiding from my friends in the bathroom at thrift town
to write this tune down.
(just doesn't stop)
today after lunch i got sick and blew chunks
all over my new shoes in the lot behind whole foods
this is a new kind of blues and what about losing
limb or loved one in a duel dissatisfies you or seems just
as a kid i did not shit my pants much,
why start now with this stuff
and man i do not bluff
second caller gets bit by a dog or jeff dahmer
kisses or stitches no mitt for these pitches
lone pone one master of the cheap pun,
if i'm not raw i'm just a bit underdone
but i'd be okay cool as a rail
if they'd just let us have health food in hell
good heavens background radiation
and the black arts of waiting
not the same since i
switched my hair part and started shaving
got hexed my hidden hair gone corners
oh i'll never be a joiner
life long local foreigner i
raw lung homegrown fake in co-ed naked choir
second tenor highest riser blessed clever compromiser
i'll be proudly mouthing watermelon every song
i put the phone to my ear
but all's i hears a dial tone
will they map my skull and wrap my bones
when my wig is gone hmmm
i'll go unknown by torpedo or crohns
only those evil live to see
their own likeness in stone
my brother said that
i can decide
while i'm alive i'll feel alive
and what's next
i guess i'll know when i've gotten there
of labor truck sigh
my neighbor walks by
high heels click dry
like half a proud horse downbrook
i hear somebody's babbling i mistook
for a cavalry whispering victory
to the sparks in their kindling
but but all their green wood's wet and unmet
as of yet by the gases of flame
pressing again the pending physics
of my passed down last name
living in the tear between two spaces condemned
in one of the many places
you're not i am
hiding from my friends in the bathroom at thrift town
to write this tune down.
(just doesn't stop)
today after lunch i got sick and blew chunks
all over my new shoes in the lot behind whole foods
this is a new kind of blues and what about losing
limb or loved one in a duel dissatisfies you or seems just
as a kid i did not shit my pants much,
why start now with this stuff
and man i do not bluff
second caller gets bit by a dog or jeff dahmer
kisses or stitches no mitt for these pitches
lone pone one master of the cheap pun,
if i'm not raw i'm just a bit underdone
but i'd be okay cool as a rail
if they'd just let us have health food in hell
good heavens background radiation
and the black arts of waiting
not the same since i
switched my hair part and started shaving
got hexed my hidden hair gone corners
oh i'll never be a joiner
life long local foreigner i
raw lung homegrown fake in co-ed naked choir
second tenor highest riser blessed clever compromiser
i'll be proudly mouthing watermelon every song
i put the phone to my ear
but all's i hears a dial tone
will they map my skull and wrap my bones
when my wig is gone hmmm
i'll go unknown by torpedo or crohns
only those evil live to see
their own likeness in stone
my brother said that
i can decide
while i'm alive i'll feel alive
and what's next
i guess i'll know when i've gotten there
Lyrics submitted by oh ok
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I have been plagued with many different health problems since i was younger. My senior year of high school I randomly developed a chronic neurological condition called Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. I threw up uncontrollably almost every day, often at school or in public places, or at restaurants. I know what it's like to throw up behind whole foods all over your new shoes and/or clothes. I know what it's like to hide from my friends in store bathrooms because i'm about to throw up. I know what it's like to hide from people.
I know what it's like to miss so much school that you don't know the words to the songs in choir, and you have to mouth watermelon on every song.
I know what it's like to feel sick and lonely. To lose your hair and to want to die. To wonder what will even happen when you are dead. To try to feel alive every day is a struggle. Nothing is as lonely as when I'm stuck at home throwing up, and most days I am so tired that I miss out on everything. I lose weight, and rapidly gain weight.
Being sick doesn't get you more attention. Being sick doesn't make you more friends. It is lonely, it is hard, it is feeling that you are in a condemned space, separate from everyone else. It is feeling like a foreigner to the people around you... you look different, you feel different, you feel socially isolated.
There are no mitts for what your body is throwing at you.
I received this email in regard to my post.
"got your e-mail address from your profile on songmeanings.net, where you posted something about the Why?-song "By Torpedo or Crohn's". I was on a concert of them yesterday (where they also sold these t-shirts) and I talked to Douglas (piano) & Austin (bass/guitar), among other things, about this line ("Kisses or Stitches. No Mitt for these Pitches."). I had read your post before the concert and I had also wondered about that line before, and I thought, you might be interested in what they said to me (I don't have an account on songmeanings.net, that's why I'm sending you this email). They explained it to me as follows: The mitt is from baseball (I guess you know that, I didn't [I'm German and don't know baseball too well...]) and the pitch is from baseball, too. And "these pitches" are so fast/hard that there is no mitt that one could catch them with without breaking one's hand bones. So I guess: whether he gets kisses or stitches, the emotions that come with them are so extreme that he can hardly/can't bear them without being hurt/broken."
that is so awesome. it's amazing how just one little lyric can be so deep. yoni is a god.
"I'll be proudly mouthing watermelon every song"
I'm not sure if this is just common knowledge or what. Back in elementary school, my chorus teacher would always tell us to "mouth watermelon" during performances if we could not remember the words so we do not look silly on stage.
remarkable song.
my favorite from the new album. i think.
This sounds more like a Hymie's song than a Why? song. If anyone knows what I'm talking about.
absolutely magnificent
my favorite from the new album. i think.
asking a forum full of why? fans to identify a hymie's basement reference is preposterous
what is hymie's basement ?!!?/1 kololol
pish posh. I know y'all know WHO I'm talking about, I meant whether anyone else got what I was thinking. Then again, apparently I was thinking that about 20 seconds before going to bed, so.