| Pearl Jam – Sleight of Hand Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I think you guys are on the right track and figured I'd add a little. It's kinda of a mid-life crisis, not in the realization that your going to die, but that life was really want you dreamed it would be like. You get an apartment or buy a house, have a corporate job that leaves you unfulfilled, kids, family, bills, repairs,...the list goes on and on. This guy, like millions of others had responsibilities that take priority over his dreams or any chance to dream. "He was okay" - means that its not like he's starving or in perpetual pain, but still knows that his life should have been better. "Lost on a road he knew by heart" is like taking the same route to work everyday, but then one day remebering to look up and away, to step outside the routine (all that he is now) and appreciate the world, to think again, to dream again. The song then brings him back to understanding his responsibilities, he'll go back to work tomorrow, go through the same rituals, the same boring job. he "says goodbye to himself" - just means that he'll see that side (the hopeful side, the dreamer side) again, sometime in the future when he for some reason gets "moved by sleight of hand". |
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| Pearl Jam – State of Love and Trust Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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In response to "promises are whispered in the age of darkness" - aludes to the idea that when you are young and make promises to your significant other - that your really too young and immature to understand what your promising - "want to be enlightened like I want to be told the end" - he is basically wants to know what his future will be like, can he ever have it back, now that he made the mistake that has tainted his pure promise to love her faithfully. Overall, the song is about a man cheating on his fiance, and wondering if he can still go through with marriage. Now having destroyed the sanctitiy of marriage by cheating, he questions what he should do. The "sin" is cheating, "but to have an empty court" I see as an empty chapel - cancelling the wedding. "We'll be in my honor, make it pain - painfully (i think this should be "quick")" If he decides to go through with the wedding, holding in this secret, he is picturing everyone seeing him as pure and faithful, but realizing their view of him is not the true him- one who has no pride, is pain that is almost unbearable - The "smell that's on my hands" is the taint of his idea of impurity that he now sees in himself. He now is looking for some way out, some way to make amends, but realizes that there is no way to put things back to the way they were. He comes up with a solution - suicide. He doesn't actually go through with it though, because "something" makes him want to "back, back it away" - it being the barrel of the gun. Did he find a light out of the darkness or someone to help him, the song doesn't reveal... |
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| Pearl Jam – Nothing as It Seems Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| The sense that I get from this song is that it might have something to do with a gender identity crisis. I think the never-ending bleakness of the song hammers in the hopelessness. The "nothing as it seems" is that even though he may look one gender from the outside, he's really another on the inside. The "home" that he needs is feeling at home in his own body. The uninvited chromosome is the y in xy (male) where he should have been xx (female). The "blanket like the ozone" gives me impression of something very fragile, that if it goes neglected, will cause death. "Chip off the conerstone" - I take as a chip off the old block, (boy just like his dad), but with the gender identity conflict, on the inside he's quite different - "who kidding, rainy day, a one-way ticket headstone". "occupations overthrown" - this is tough, I see it as social constructions around gender - to be male you should act and think this way, if female, another - he wants those forces - "occupations", overthrown. The scratching voice, the whisper, inadaquate words, a complete and utter outsider, with no voice, no hope, "the little that he frees" is either "nothing he believes" or "a little bittersweet", again reinforcing the unachievable end. He doesn't want to be judged from his external appearance, like as iceberg where 90% of the mass is under water. , "the little that you see...it's home." | |
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