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Bush – Inflatable Lyrics 17 years ago
someone said that this was a love song in "the most dismal of ways" or something.

i don't think it's dismal at all. being faithful to something so that you can begin to feel how pretty everything is in white light happens when you forgive god for his narcissistic personality disorder so that he can forgive you and you can become inflatable. and stuff like, let's put the dsm aside and just feel the same we used to when we felt how powerful love was, and not even worrying about being forgiven for cheating or cheeting or whatever other sin that was committed. we're still spinning around these two howling moons cuz they're always there until i find you, and inflate.

jesus online is a pretty closely related song. the best bush songs besides inflatable and jesus online are warm machine, little things, comedown, swallowed, all of golden state and a tendency to start fires. glycerine and x-girlfriend are their other best songs. but alien is their best song. they're best albums are little things swallowed, and the science of things are their best albums, in inverse order. but wanderlust is no doubt's favorite album.

the videos are all really good too, especially for letting the cables sleep, which is their best song. i sometimes like to think that if they had a better cinematographer the videos would have come out better, but you have to remember that they're were trying to be produced by their time so that they could get their message across better.

in the middle of a world on a fishhook.

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Bright Eyes – Something Vague Lyrics 17 years ago
about the song title...

in the second paragraph of "the importance of dreams", carl jung's chapter in a book called "man and his symbols" (a book that explains, among other things, how an individual's unconscious communicates to their conscious mind through symbol-filled dreams), jung writes:

"What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that posesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. It implies S O M E T H I N G V A G U E, unknown, or hidden from us."

maybe the title is a conscious reference to jung, maybe it's unconscious (conor talks about "all this automatic writing" in "if the brakeman turns my way"). or maybe it's just synchronicity.

i'm sure conor's read jung. cassadaga especially is very parapsychological, and relates in many ways to jung's work.

anyway...

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Bush – Inflatable Lyrics 17 years ago
i'm sorry but whoever transcribed these lyrics got them pretty wrong.

let it slide
overhead
when I believe in you
my soul can rest

but as love that’s really love
can never fail, but fail it does

when we shine
like a sun
you seem the only one
my only friend

you’re so pretty in white
pretty when you’re faithful
so pretty in white
pretty when you’re faithful
when you’re faithful

I resigned
from myself
took a break
as someone else

it’s like I’ve come undone
but I’ve only just become
inflatable for you

so pretty in white...

I don’t mind
most of the time
but you push me so far inside

[chorus]


...the video speaks a lot to the meaning of the song, and is really beautiful, especially the fight scene during the slow solo. they go really well together in that blatantly incompatable kind of way. brilliant.

i think the song is about the idea that there is no true love in our culture, in the sense of two monogamous people never having the inclination to look at someone else across the room and take even the slightest interest in someone else, and that love has to then instead occur only in the form of faithfulness (the word "faithful" implies that there is a temptation that is pursued ).

most of the lyrics (ex: "let it slide over head" and "when we shine like a sun") are about a recognition that the love is not perfect that happens alongside moments when the love seems to be the opposite way. "i resigned from myself..." vs. "you seem the only one, my only friend". resignation at the recognition that the love is not true vs. the feeling at times that it is. i think the fight scene over the beautifully inappropriate slow melody could have something to do with that contrast.

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The Shins – Sleeping Lessons Lyrics 18 years ago
nvm i just realized someone posted the lyrics as written in the booklet.

the song is about processes involving "the self", either as a metaphor for or in the context of larger social/historical trends and circumstances, or both.

"collect your novel petals for the stem"
- i think he's encouraging the individual to create and try out those more superficial, transient, peripheral parts of the self, in order to strengthen the central self that is always there. but when and how he says it might indicate that he's being facetious, and that he thinks trying on novel selves is damaging and weakening.

"and if the old guards still offend/they got nothing left on which you depend/so enlist every ounce of your bright blood/and off with their heads"

- i think he's referring to a time when the parts of yourself that usually serve to protect you - by regulating things for you unconsciously - start to turn on you, becoming demonistic and oppressive. in your helplessness you have to search within yourself for something with which to fight the "bad" parts off. ("so enlist every ounce of your bright blood, and off with their heads")

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The Shins – Sleeping Lessons Lyrics 18 years ago
nvm i just realized someone posted the lyrics as written in the booklet.

the song is about processes involving "the self", either as a metaphor for or in the context of larger social/historical trends and circumstances, or both.

"collect your novel petals for the stem"
- i think he's encouraging the individual to create and try out those more superficial, transient, peripheral parts of the self, in order to strengthen the central self that is always there. but when and how he says it might indicate that he's being facetious, and that he thinks trying on novel selves is damaging and weakening.

"and if the old guards still offend/they got nothing left on which you depend/so enlist every ounce of your bright blood/and off with their heads"

- i think he's referring to a time when the parts of yourself that usually serve to protect you - by regulating things for you unconsciously - start to turn on you, becoming demonistic and oppressive. in your helplessness you have to search within yourself for something with which to fight the "bad" parts off. ("so enlist every ounce of your bright blood, and off with their heads")

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The Shins – Sleeping Lessons Lyrics 18 years ago
it's definitely "and if the old *guards still offend"

and "jumped from *a hook"

i'd like to say that "you low animal" is really "you *lone animal." that would make more sense, i think.

submissions
The Shins – Sleeping Lessons Lyrics 18 years ago
it's definitely "and if the old *guards still offend"

and "jumped from *a hook"

i'd like to say that "you low animal" is really "you *lone animal" that would make more sense, i think.

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