| La Dispute – A Broken Jar Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Sharing the position of the narrator, I'll try my hand at interpreting as well. "So here goes" starting off is very much a phrase used to indicate reluctance in completing some action, a lack of confidence, motivation or desire to do the thing. In this case, I believe it's reluctance for lack of confidence and motivation--the narrator has the desire but "one last letter now, one last attempt to make sense" indicates he's losing hope in his ability to write to clarify his existential angst for himself or for others. "What have I been trying to accomplish?" is not a literal misunderstanding of his action, but the emotional and mental fatigue from the intense existential thought clouding his mind as he's wandered through a labyrinth of uncertainty and profound doubt. The attempt to uncover the meaning and represent it makes things "blurry"--very comparable to the painting in Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse", where the character Lily Briscoe attempts to find and represent truth and totality through art, a meaning, a reason, an essence, but paints a blurred picture. Life's many intricacies and tragedies are incomprehensible in finding a comforting reason, or a reason at all. The narrator is having an identity crisis. He's adopted a skepticist mindset where he questions his very own self, because he's lost his own normal grounding in his self-defeating, self-examining behaviour. He recognises this shift and no longer knows if he is the same "voice" writing these stories, not as if he's changed as a person but rather that he is a stranger to his former self, his normal life, before the "departure". He doesn't even know if he's always been that way, that he's just uncovered his real self. It's schizophrenic and character, yet I honestly can't tell if it's metaphoric or it's simply a result of his existential depression. "I don't know... I don't know." This is a melancholic, exhausted admission of defeat, not a cathartic acknowledgment of uncertainty. "One last desperate plea..." means the letter and his last attempt to find clarity and hope it exorcises the demons, despite the fact that writing hasn't helped it at all ("A Poem"). He tragically sees it as a twisted comedy, as if his existential guilt amid normal lives is a situational comedy to others, as if it's something to mock. "Losing sanity" is pretty self-explanatory, and is an explicit recognition for the listener about what has been happening across the entire album. He asks if it's been "fashioned by the worst of me" and is not something that life has forced upon him, but something he's forced upon himself--he struggles with this question several times throughout the four monologues/letters. The broken jar is symbolic of his life, his direction, his mindset and purpose, and the image of a shattered household item is also a symbol for a childish accident, which is reinforced by trying to reassemble the jar and being frustrated by the outcome--the cracks still show, no matter what. The entire album reflects a self-inflicted pain, an accident; I share the sentiment, and believe that, like me, the existential depression may not have been something entirely forced by a situation. It may have started happening as he kept questioning in this way. A tragedy cannot force one to question, the individual must question it first. And even if there was an event that occurred that set this downward spiral in motion, there was still certainly an accidental nature to the intensity of his own thinking and doubting. Self-examination at times may be natural, but intense existential questioning from tragedy is not inherently common. He's trying to let go of something and someone. It's very unclear who he means--maybe the lover in "You and I in Unison" or his former self, or maybe both. I myself am struggling to decide whether or not to let go of what I thought was my former self, because I'm not sure if that self is real or not. After years of being trapped within your own mind, who you once were becomes alien and a tragically blurry memory, maybe even just a story or a fabrication in this context. He mentioned before he doesn't want to forget, find a substitute, and be happy. These truths, this uncertainty and existential pondering, are probably extremely true, and the narrator does not wish to comfort himself in a lie that these things don't have a significance. He can't find it or cope with the mystery, though. His entire life now revolves around repairing the jar and finding the answers and meaning, but it's been damaging him far more as things pile on. He is Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, looking back at the ruin in awe and unable to look forward. He has applied this historiography to life and his existence. The final part solidifies this is a frustrated, tortured post-modern piece. He cannot reason the meaning out, cannot repair the broken jar. Whereas the post-modernist would say this inability to find a totality/absolute in the ruin is okay, the narrator throws the shards out in hopelessness and accepts aimlessly leading toward the curtain call, death. Much like in "White Noise" by Don Delillo, the narrator contemplates his own mortality and how to live life properly without reason. He surrenders to proceeding toward death anyway, not in a dignified way, but as a tragic actor (curtain call). As for hope in this, there is little to none. The final two songs offer some hope, but much less than the epic "The Last Lost Continent" in the first album. He does, however, return to love being the cure--an intimacy in sharing fear and life with another person. Whoever he's loved has left in some way, I believe through death, but it's open to interpretation. Yet he resolves to sing this lover's name with his and never let the bond sever though she's faded from mortal existence and his life. It's not an overly hopeful resolution, but certainly not a suicide. |
|
| La Dispute – A Departure Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| The narrator's introspection is so haunting. I can't help but be reduced to tears as I read the lyrics of the "A..." songs, realising that they're a torturous reflection of the person I've become and life I've departed into. I hope that I'll find some sort of deliverance and closure, because I don't see that much of it at the end of this album. | |
| Isles & Glaciers – Viola Lion Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
Well, first off I notice the entire song is built upon a paradoxical extended metaphor. Every lyric illustrates this. "I am a million pieces of the sky" indicates a hyperbolic image of a shattered, broken continuity of the sky; "I found a way to be alone," following the statement that he is the sky, creates a paradox of a sky being separated from the people it is always watching over, even though many people always consider the sky to be with them. "I'm gonna wait until you want me // Until you finally decide to go home" illustrates a disjoint between desire and departure. These oxymoronic statements are intended to convey the narrator's/author's confusion to the listener/reader. Using apostraphe to question the diamond in the sky -- brilliant, beautiful, yet small fragments compared to the wholeness of the sky -- tries to reckon with whether whatever or whomever the narrator is speaking to is with him, if all of the diamond is with him, because he makes a near-direct admission of confusion that is unusual in the use of paradox. The lines "I can't believe all of these beautiful lies // As they surround me I will take a photograph of the sky" serve as admission of disbelief, where the narrator basically says he doesn't understand the situation he is in, and will photograph himself (the sky) as the situation unfolds to understand it from another point of view in the future. The reader/listener is meant to understand this confusion as a paralysis of action due to inability to understand--something the narrator hopes to alleviate by future rumination. The second part of the meaning to this is the imagery and diction. Description of these elements are simple as they both contain two things in common: beauty and romanticism. The romantic and beautiful descriptors, such as the reference of the woman as a "diamond" and the lies as "beautiful," the narrator asking to be "bur[ied] ... alone in the light" serves to enhance the paradoxical nature of the relationship between the narrator and the diamond, and to communicate to the reader/listener how intensely the author feels about this relationship and the beauty of it, implying a more deeply painful effect as the relationship shows itself to be conflicting and confusing. The romantic diction and imagery reveal that the narrator holds onto an unchanging, romantic ideal that is contradictory to the hurtful confusion in the relationship. Toward the end, describing now the girl as "smiling from the top of the world" and "sleeping on, amazing I know" reflect even more the narrator's romantic ideal and serve to underscore that point even more. The narrator puts the girl on a pedestal, and introduces another paradox of seeing this girl, a source of confusion for the narrator, as so grand despite her actions. The reader/listener is meant to view this as a seemingly unconditional acceptance of the girl, even to unhealthy extents. The abusiveness of the relationship and self-destructiveness lies in the fact that the narrator wishes for the girl to "lower, lower, lower [him] down" because he recognises that she "lowers [him] clearly," so he accepts the problematic nature of the relationship. The songwriter's selection of this request reflects the ideas that the narrator is willingly engaging in a destructive relationship, and that the reader should understand that this behaviour is not necessarily desirable. Without continuing to beat this song to death, the devices make it clear what the meaning is: confusion about what the relationship is and how the other person feels, leading to conflicting and confusing feelings, and intensifying the pain because of the romantic ideal in the narrator's mind. The song explores the theme of dealing with a romantic ideal even in a hurtful and confounding relationship in which a person willingly prolongs, and ultimately appears to leave the problem up to an open-ended solution, as the chorus stanza is repeated to a point at the end, demonstrating how difficult it is to produce a stock solution for this problem. |
|
| Staind – Please Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I could understand all of these "what Aaron Lewis meant" interpretations, but it really seems (like much great poetry) to be purposefully written in such a way that it leaves it up for myriad applications to the general type of relationship it portrays: an abusive one where the oppressor expects more than what a person is and tries to be, and attempts to deny the abuse by taking the grandiose "it's okay, you're overreacting" position. This could very well refer to the label and the music industry, but Lewis writes it so that the song conveys a general relationship that connects to the listeners. I really identify with the song because my over-dependence on people has created an abusive relationship with many of my "friends" who, while consciously they believe they are acting in the correct, cordial, friendly manner, they are really holding me up to standards that I have been failing to please. And this is really only because I don't handle all the stress I currently have well; lack of sleep and mounds of work keep me tired and bitter and it's really just compounded any problems I've had before. The example is this: they consciously act as if I should be bigger than I am and can be at this moment, yet unconsciously punish me for the way I really am acting through their outward behaviour toward me. When I react (in a milder way than the song's reaction), I get them claiming "everything's okay" and "stop overreacting!" Lewis cannot defend himself from this two-faced, abusive treatment from his own oppressor, and bites back by saying that in overreacting he'll feel more like them for overreacting to his failure to meet their standards ("Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" being an idiom for overreaction, as previously mentioned), yet ironically he still won't live up to what they want him to be. Very powerful song. The vocals, diction and syntax are very in-your-face; quite the opposite of subtle. Anyone who listens to the song can generally agree that he has gone off the brink in terms of what he can put up with from the relationship. |
|
| Crossfade – Dead Skin Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
To me, the entire song seems like he's coping with personality problems, brought on by his environment (experiences in his life), that have wrecked his relationship with someone, possibly with multiple people, but most significantly with the single person referenced in the song. The issue is magnified by the abuse of narcotics. In a lament of defeatism, he regrets his past actions and how he his and hates what he's become and has no clue how to change it: he can't "get out of this dead skin." He can't even "get under his dead skin" to find out what brought all of it on. So because he can't fix his life or at least figure out why he is the way he is, he wants to end it all, but can't even bring himself to end it, hence his praying that someone will come to "blow [him] away." TL;DR he's pretty much f*cked in the head. I feel for this bro because I'm in the same situation right now and don't know how to fix myself, even though I do know what caused it. Mental problems, man. FFfffff*ck. |
|
| The Killers – Mr. Brightside Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| This song is like a lot of how I feel. While it may not be what the song fully intentioned the meaning to be, for my personal interpretation it holds to be about maybe 90% with the artists' admitted meaning. For me, living with OCD, I have a lot of paranoia around my best friend (well love interest who could turn into a girlfriend soon if all goes right) and constantly need reassurance she's not finding other men attractive, which makes her peeved with me. For me, this entire scenario is just "in my head," yet it still kills me, and fills me with baseless jealousy. I "choke on [her] alibis" that I know are true but are still afraid of being ultimately false. I let my jealousy consume me as I listen to music that reflects my deepest anxieties. Yet I still need to remind myself that what she wants is an trusting optimist and not an non-trusting pessimist--I need to be her Mr Brightside. | |
| RA – Crazy Little Voices Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| In their "Black Sheep" album, they changed the lyrics from "Bring me the rage" to "Bring me the gun". I listen to the song over and over and cannot hear the word "rage"--it sounds like "gun". | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.