I'm honestly not sure if I would like this song so much if I hadn't heard it on Bottle Rocket first. Am I so vain? Regardless, here are my impressions of the song:
The first stanza regards either his first teacher or his first sex partner (I feel like I've read the second interpretation somewhere else). The next regards when he becomes a man, i.e. loses his virginity. The last is when someone dies.
If you accept the latter interpretation of the first stanza, the first two stanzas are inherently related. The third might only make sense if the man dying is himself (losing your virginity supposedly makes you a man, whereas watching the same man dying would contravene that notion). That these events "didn't make the impression that some people say" indicates that losing his virginity wasn't as special as he had imagined-perhaps that's how the man he becomes has died.
If you accept the former, all three tie together as a progression from learning facts (school) to learning love, to learning death. Or, birth, life/love, and death.
When he says "my bed hold a trinity" I for some reason imagined that the brothers lost their virginity in a three-way, but that's kinda twisted, isn't it...
I'm honestly not sure if I would like this song so much if I hadn't heard it on Bottle Rocket first. Am I so vain? Regardless, here are my impressions of the song:
The first stanza regards either his first teacher or his first sex partner (I feel like I've read the second interpretation somewhere else). The next regards when he becomes a man, i.e. loses his virginity. The last is when someone dies.
If you accept the latter interpretation of the first stanza, the first two stanzas are inherently related. The third might only make sense if the man dying is himself (losing your virginity supposedly makes you a man, whereas watching the same man dying would contravene that notion). That these events "didn't make the impression that some people say" indicates that losing his virginity wasn't as special as he had imagined-perhaps that's how the man he becomes has died.
If you accept the former, all three tie together as a progression from learning facts (school) to learning love, to learning death. Or, birth, life/love, and death.
When he says "my bed hold a trinity" I for some reason imagined that the brothers lost their virginity in a three-way, but that's kinda twisted, isn't it...