| The Beatles – Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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There is also a pot shot at the Gun lobby in America and the idea that having a gun means you are safer (I think John was completely wrong in this aspect though because all data we have overwhelmingly suggests that the more guns around and the more concealed carry permits in general issued, the lower the crime rate. Australia, after requiring all their citizens to turn in their guns, had a dramatic 300% increase in murder the following year. Guns keep people safe. Perhaps if there were no guns already around, it would be different; but Pandora's Box has been opened and criminals, by definition, break laws, so to expect them to turn in their guns like law abiding citizens is naive. ) Mobi |
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| The Beatles – Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song is about the seduction and suicide of a nun by a man who intended to seduce her only for sex. She believed he loved her and ultimately she kills him and herself for her betrayal of her vows and her God. Here is a line by line analysis (somewhat out of order for clarity): "Mother Superior Jump the Gun" is a multi-layered reference literally about a nun having intercourse prior to her death (and not just any nun, the leader of the convent), when she will (according to Catholicism) ultimately be (re)-united with her groom, Jesus. (Nuns wear a wedding ring on their right hand indicating they are "married to Jesus"); however, this is very likely a shot at organized religion by John.In addition, it also talks of her ultimate fate, which is suicide because of her earthly seduction by someone who doesn't love here. "She's not a girl who misses much": again, when taken in this context, she doesn't miss much, but not in the observational sense; in the experiential sense; not the normal things a nun should miss such as carnal knowledge and human love, although it also, based on the line: "Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime.," is irony insofar as she could not tell that he was not truly in love with her and he seduced her and threw her away for sexual gratification only, at first with his eyes and and and with his soft caress. "A soap impression of his wife" - soap implies cleanliness, so he lied to her about his wife or marriage or cleaned the picture up in someway (perhaps telling her she is dead., or he cleaned it up in some way as to make it more palatable,) "which he ate" --why do we eat soap or have our mouths washed out with soap? For lying of course. "And donated to the national trust." - he used this piece of information to win her over or to manipulate her, national in this sense meaning more universal or far-reaching. "I need a fix cause I'm going down, down to the bits that I left uptown"- this is literally a heroin reference to coming down, but here it means a sexual fix: he is going back to the broken woman he left "uptown"-- this word is important and is one of the key reasons that this is not a drug reference: If he meant heroin, he would have said "downtown", a euphemism for heroin (just as 'uptown' is a cocaine euphemism) but he is talking about the bits or shell of the woman he had this relationship, uptown implying class or somewhere of importance. "Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot," the nun ultimately commits suicide because she violates her vows and betrays Jesus, after she commits murder: she kills him. [There is a slight reference to Dante here insofar as she is already damned to Judecca, the 9th Circle, 4th Round of Hell (Canto XXIV) in Dante's Inferno (Part III of "The Divine Comedy." The 9th Circle is reserved for Betrayers, but special betrayer's and the 4th Round in particular is for those who have betrayed God; it is reserved for the Biblical giants lie Judas & Satan as well as the assassins of Caesar, Claudius and Brutus (because Dante thought they betrayed Italy and the World by killing the Divinely Appointed unifier of Italy.)] Since she will already be damned for betraying Jesus, she will receive no additional punishment by killing her betrayer (whom she betrays by taking his life), and killing herself. "When I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm" This is irony as she believes no human can do her any more harm or even God because of her damnation. The warm reference in "warm gun", in addition to denoting that she fired the weapon, also is an ironic Dante reference because in the 9th Circle, you are frozen in ice and not burned by fire, up to a level commensurate with your crimes. "She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane" - this is a masturbation reference not an LSD reference. Her desires for love and carnal pleasure have often lead to masturbation. "The man in the crowd with the multi-colored mirrors on his hob-nail boots" Hob-nail boots imply that he was working class, used for traction so the he doesn't fall off and reveal his true self to her; the mirrors have several meanings: one, the obvious one, is that he is a pervert, peaking under dresses using mirrors on his boots, but below that level is that of her vision of herself as she looks down, constantly reflecting back at her the betrayal she is about to commit. He is also covering his working class boots with the reflection or the fantasy of what he wants her to believe, but she is a willing participant, ready to believe him. MobiusDick ****Note that all interpretations of this song are valid except one and that is John Lennon's own. If you study the literary criticism of the 2oth Century beginning with Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, James Joyce and TS Elliott, you realize we are in the century of Relativity; whatever meaning a song has to you is a valid interpretation [It is the meaning a song has (to you)]. The reason the author is excepted from interpretation is because of another artifact of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (i.e,,modern physics) references, and that is related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In physics, this means that we cannot exactly know both momentum (velocity, { that is {times mass}) and location X at the same time. [ΔX × ∆P ≮ hâ„2Ï€ ]. When we know one exactly, we must sacrifice our knowledge of the other such that the product of the uncertainty of the two measurements is greater than Plank's Constant divided by 2Ï€ ; or, in terms of Energy and Time [ ΔE × ∆T ≮ hâ„2Ï€]. When using this in terms of literary criticism, the person creating the work has too much psychological baggage to interpret his or her own work. In other words, you cannot step outside of yourself and see what you look like to other people. A good example of this occuring to me personally where I began to really understand the significance, was when I was reading over some poetry from a college poetry magazine I had been involved with in the early 1990's, The pages were typed so I could not recognize the handwriting. I read two peoms that I was blown away by and I was trying to determine which of the people involved in the magazine had written the poems. I suddenly realized they were my own work; immediately, I no longer was able to see anything special about the poems, and I began picking them apart line by line. I have always been very critical of my own writing and I cannot look at it from an unbiased veiw. No matter how many people tell me how much they like it or how impressed theey are, it is hard for me to get beyond the phase of self-doubt. MD****** |
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| The Beatles – Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Also, "She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane" - this is a masturbation reference not an LSD reference. Her desires for love and carnal pleasure have often lead to masturbation. "The man in the crowd with the multi-colored mirrors on his hob-nail boots" Hob-nail boots imply that he was working class, used for traction so the he doesn't fall off and reveal his true self to her; the mirrors have several meanings: one, the obvious one, is that he is a pervert, peaking under dresses using mirrors on his boots, but below that level is that of her vision of herself as she looks down, constantly reflecting back at her the betrayal she is about to commit. He is also covering his working class boots with the reflection or the fantasy of what he wants her to believe, but she is a willing participant, ready to believe him. ****Note that all interpretations of this song are valid except one and that is John Lennon's own. If you study the literary criticism of the 2oth Century beginning with Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, James Joyce and TS Elliott, you realize we are in the century of Relativity; whatever meaning a song has to you is a valid interpretation [It is the meaning a song has (to you)]. The reason the author is excepted from interpretation is because of another artifact of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (i.e,,modern physics) references, and that is related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In physics, this means that we cannot exactly know both momentum (velocity, { that is {times mass}) and location X at the same time. [ΔX × ∆P ≮ hâ„2Ï€ ]. When we know one exactly, we must sacrifice our knowledge of the other such that the product of the uncertainty of the two measurements is greater than Plank's Constant divided by 2Ï€ ; or, in terms of Energy and Time [ ΔE × ∆T ≮ hâ„2Ï€]. When using this in terms of literary criticism, the person creating the work has too much psychological baggage to interpret his or her own work. In other words, you cannot step outside of yourself and see what you look like to other people. A good example of this occuring to me personally where I began to really understand the significance, was when I was reading over some poetry from a college poetry magazine I had been involved with in the early 1990's, The pages were typed so I could not recognize the handwriting. I read two peoms that I was blown away by and I was trying to determine which of the people involved in the magazine had written the poems. I suddenly realized they were my own work; immediately, I no longer was able to see anything special about the poems, and I began picking them apart line by line. I have always been very critical of my own writing and I cannot look at it from an unbiased veiw. No matter how many people tell me how much they like it or how impressed theey are, it is hard for me to get beyond the phase of self-doubt. MD****** MobiusDick |
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| The Beatles – Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Mother Superior Jump the Gun" is a multi-layered reference literally about a nun having intercourse prior to her death (and not just any nun, the leader of the convent), when she will (according to Catholicism) ultimately be (re)-united with her groom, Jesus. (Nuns wear a wedding ring on their right hand indicating they are "married to Jesus"); however, this is very likely a shot at organized religion by John.In addition, it also talks of her ultimate fate, which is suicide because of her earthly seduction by someone who doesn't love here. She's not a girl who misses much: again, when taken in this context, she doesn't miss much, but not in the observational sense; in the experiential sense; not the normal things a nun should miss such as carnal knowledge and human love, although it also, based on the line: "Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime.," is irony insofar as she could not tell that he was not truly in love with her and he seduced her and threw her away for sexual gratification only, at first with his eyes and and and with his soft caress. "A soap impression of his wife" - soap implies cleanliness, so he lied to her about his wife or marriage or cleaned the picture up in someway (perhaps telling her she is dead., or he cleaned it up in some way as to make it more palatable,) "which he ate" --why do we eat soap or have our mouths washed out with soap? For lying of course. "And donated to the national trust." - he used this piece of information to win her over or to manipulate her, national in this sense meaning more universal or far-reaching. "I need a fix cause I'm going down, down to the bits that I left uptown"- this is literally a heroin reference to coming down, but here it means a sexual fix: he is going back to the broken woman he left "uptown"-- this word is important and is one of the key reasons that this is not a drug reference: If he meant heroin, he would have said "downtown", a euphemism for heroin (just as 'uptown' is a cocaine euphemism) but he is talking about the bits or shell of the woman he had this relationship, uptown implying class or somewhere of importance. "Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot," the nun ultimately commits suicide because she violates her vows and betrays Jesus, after she commits murder: she kills him. [There is a slight reference to Dante here insofar as she is already damned to Judecca, the 9th Circle, 4th Round of Hell (Canto XXIV) in Dante's Inferno (Part III of "The Divine Comedy." The 9th Circle is reserved for Betrayers, but special betrayer's and the 4th Round in particular is for those who have betrayed God; it is reserved for the Biblical giants lie Judas & Satan as well as the assassins of Caesar, Claudius and Brutus (because Dante thought they betrayed Italy and the World by killing the Divinely Appointed unifier of Italy.)] Since she will already be damned for betraying Jesus, she will receive no additional punishment by killing her betrayer (whom she betrays by taking his life), and killing herself. "When I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm" This is irony as she believes no human can do her any more harm or even God because of her damnation. The warm reference in "warm gun", in addition to denoting that she fired the weapon, also is an ironic Dante reference because in the 9th Circle, you are frozen in ice and not burned by fire, up to a level commensurate with your crimes. MobiusDick |
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