Tranquilize

Long time music purveyor, but this is my first post to this site. Just needed to share my ideas on what this song is about.

I'll split it up verse by verse, because I think the lyrics have to be taken as close to whole as possible to really give a proper meaning. I've also modified some of the sentence structure to what I think was intended:

• Time it tells, living in my home town;
• wedding bells, they begin easy.
• Live it down, baby don’t talk that much.
• Baby knows, but baby don’t tease me.
• In the park, we could go walking;
• Drown in the dark, or we could go sailing
• On the sea

This is about sweet beginnings. The "time it tells" line is indicative of sour times to come, and that's only further solidified by the idea that wedding bells "begin easy," as though we knew things would eventually change. There's a kind of naivete to the possibility of darker times or serious political issues dealt with in places other than here, and as the decadence dawns on "my hometown," we "live it down," and "don't talk that much" about the problems pervading. "Baby knows" that there's something seriously wrong happening, "but baby don't tease me," I think they're using the definition of tease that means "to pester or vex," as in they know there's something wrong, but they permit my ignorance, like mutually beneficial blind eyes to the world's evils; so long as these issues don't affect me or my life, life is good.

The whole verse gives this impression that our narrator understands what's going on, and it could bother him, but he chooses not to deal with it. Those around him permit and encourage this approach, perhaps because they expect the same of him in return.

• Always here, always on time;
• close call, was it love or was it just easy?
• Money talks when people need shoes and socks,
• Steady boys, I'm thinking she needs me.
• I was just sipping on something sweet
• I don’t need political process

Here you get this notion of someone who can't be bothered with the aforementioned greater issues "when people need shoes and socks." So long as our narrator is "always here, always on time," he feels that that's all that's required of him in life. The "close call" line, I think is the turning point of the song, wherein he begins to realize this metaphorical circlejerk that's pervading his home town. He asks if it was love, or "just easy" to live his life in a closed circle and only mind the issues that affect him and his family.

The line, "steady boys," and the lyric that follows I feel are bonded by this notion that, once again, it's hard to answer or go against the proverbial call-to-arms. I see it as, "I can't participate in this global issue, because my wife needs me and my children need clothes."

• I got this feeling that they‘re gonna break down the door
• I got this feeling they they’re gonna come back for more
• See I was thinking that I lost my mind
• But it’s been getting to me all this time
• And it don’t stop dragging me down

Continuing the previous path of thought, these feelings of impending doom are impacting our narrator. He's trying hard to fight against the feelings, but to no avail, they "don't stop dragging me down."

• Silently reflection turns my world to stone
• Patiently correction leaves us all alone
• And sometimes I’m a travellin' man
• But tonight this engine's failing

I think this line is telling us that he's starting to not be able to cope with these thoughts he's been trying to hard to hide from himself. His self-reflection is leaving him somber and isolated from others who'd rather continue with their own routines. Normally, he can travel elsewhere, away from the issues, somewhere he can pretend they don't exist. But tonight, it's become hard for him to run away from his problems, and he's stuck in the harsh reality of his own "stone world."

• I still hear the children playing

• Kick the can, kick the can, skip and blackjack;

• steal a car and ring-around-rosey;

• rock and roll, candyland, boogeyman;

• run away and give me your sneakers!

Standard child hood fare mixed in with the effect of world issues on their impressionable minds. Acts of aggression and juvenile tendencies, along with fearful thoughts (i.e. the "boogeyman") interspersed with their childhoods shows that the global issues are reaching and affecting them.

• Acid rain, when Abel looked up at Cain
• We began the weeping and wailing
• A hurried high from pestilence, pills and pride,
• It’s a shame, we could of gone sailing
• But heaven knows,
• Heaven knows everything
• Tranquilize

Cain and Abel is a classic story, considered to be the first act of injustice by man against man. I think this is the first real indication from our narrator that the problems he's dealing with are man-made, and the evils of the world inflicted on us by each other are what's keeping us from living our lives happily, hence "it's a shame, we could have gone sailing."

• I still hear the children playing;
• dead-beat dancers come to us and stay.

The "dead-beat dancers" of the world are those who live in the learned ignorance our narrator despises more and more each day.

• Cause I don’t care where you've been,
• and I don’t care what you've seen.
• We’re the ones who still believe,
• and we’re looking for a page
• in that lifeless book of hope
• where a dream might help you cope,
• When the Bush's and the bombs...
• uh-huh, tranquilized.

This is pretty self-explanatory when compared to the rest of the song. It has a somber mood to it, and I think based on the rest of my interpretation of the song, that he does mean "Bush's," as in the U.S. president and others like him, who feel that there ever is a justification for war (i.e. the continuation of the legacy of Cain and Abel and man's injustice to man.) It's definitely a departure for Flowers to name somebody directly in a song, but I think he wanted to leave no room for interpretation what he meant, and he saved the lyric for last so that it remains with a person long after they listened.

Hopefully all of that made sense and was helpful.