| Neutral Milk Hotel – Conversation with Robert Schneider (Will Cullen Hart) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I see this conversation in terms of my own experience, which is based upon growing up with a pure ideological belief that becomes shattered by the senselessness of the world. If you spend the first couple decades of your life devoted to and fervent about Jesus or Allah or even humanity or love or beauty...without any room for compromise, and then you suddenly become disillusioned...it's a heartbreaking and confusing transition. The purity, the 'flower', the 'big picture' that is your reason for living becomes fractured and disjointed and ugly. And you can't undo all of the pieces once they fit that way. In the end I think he almost wishes that he had followed the crowds of people who did what society expected, who went to college and lived the American Dream. Or at least he could have been a sideburn-wearing, cool rebel-type that fits into an established stereotype that people could understand. But in the end he can't even fit in by standing out in a crowd. Maybe that's one of the things that makes for a true artist. If you become enough of an outcast you can see the world from a distance and recognize what makes it what it is, with all its quirks and stupidities and inadvertent beauties. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.