| The Dismemberment Plan – You Are Invited Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Wow, lots of contradictory opinions here about what the song means. Is the invitation to do anything positive or negative???…I suspect that the message is negative. Here’s why: First, listen to how Morrison sings at the very end of the song, “for all tiiiiiiime…” like he’s full of dread and apprehension. Like ‘this horrible thing is going to go on forever!’ Second, when our narrator goes to the second party everyone, including his ex, has a dumb, glazed smile, like they’re thrilled about something that doesn’t even make sense(!) and they’re reciting the chorus. It’s supposedly great news from the mouth of an idiot, not to be trusted. Third, both parties the narrator goes to are a waste of time. In the first party no one is having any fun and in the second everyone is having pointless, meaningless fun that the narrator doesn’t join in on. Fourth, when he gets the invite at the beginning of the song it’s completely arbitrary and meaningless. No return address, no RSVP, no date, no location; just his name and the message. It doesn’t mean anything(!) it really is just like a dumb joke. Fifth, the line ‘you are so needed, if you really want to go,’ seems self-contradictory since it stresses need and then seems to shrug and say ‘if you want to…’ which casts doubt on the meaningfulness of the message. I think, as others have said here, that when Morrison sings we are invited by anyone to do anything we’re supposed to feel empty and lost, like the song’s narrator who travels around town looking for a good party that he can’t find. He has a lousy time whether people are enjoying themselves partying or not. At the end of the song his neighbor is crying on the front porch, apparently left out of the weekend’s festivities. He’s sad and alone and our narrator throws the invite to his feet and recites the message as if to tell him ‘you can join these parties, where everyone does whatever, see how much happier it makes you!’ I think this song is about how being perfectly free makes us feel ungrounded. To say we are invited by anyone to do anything is a bit like saying that anything we do is of equal or no value and that no one cares what we do anyway. Life is meaningless whether we join the fun parties, join the lame parties or just stay at home and don’t party at all. That moment where the Ex smiles dumbly at the narrator and the chorus pours in like a geyser is indeed a wonderful moment and may be the most crucial instant on all of Emergency & I. |
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| The Dismemberment Plan – What Do You Want Me to Say? Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Okay, there’s obviously some kind of relationship situation going on in this song but I think the first verse addresses something more general. Here’s my crack at it: He’s lost his membership card to the human race, or, he’s an outsider, disconnected from everyone. However(!) he wants to get back into the loop and is, so to speak, in the process of getting his card reprinted. As he prepares to reassimilate himself with people he recalls his priorities: having feelings good, dishonesty bad, holding back worst, i.e. he must make an effort to connect to people and share his feelings, not be defensive or restrained. And as soon as he rises to the occasion, people (Morrison cleverly calls them ‘injuns over the hill’) start to pose problems for him. The next verse is more concrete and specific. He’s not just having trouble connecting with people in general but with one person in particular, presumably his girlfriend. He can’t be straight (eye-to-eye) with her, honest about his feelings, though he’d like to be. Instead, they’re in a power struggle. He can win the argument and be above her or lose the argument and be below her but he can’t just be on the same level with her, sharing feelings honestly. Moses brought God’s Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai to the Jews in Exodus, I suppose this comparison is supposed to indicate the state of his relationship since both the narrator and his partner just deliver judgments or moral justifications to each other and don’t share anything they really feel. His girlfriend distrusts him. They can’t be friendly anymore. They’re miserable. They can’t make each other laugh, except in defiance of one another. And his question to her is the chorus: what do you want me to say so you’ll trust me? So you’ll believe that I’m being straight with you?! The song is about the challenges of connecting with people; of being honest and sincere with them instead of having to fight or use them; of getting people to trust you, trust that you won’t judge them or use them. By the way, this song is one of my favorites from E&I. The obscure verses take some unraveling but the music is so immediate that the song is very probably the most cathartic on the whole album. |
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| The Dismemberment Plan – The Jitters Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The narrator of our song dislikes his friends and close acquaintances. He can see right through the lies they tell, the acts they put on every day, the agendas they try to keep secret. They’re phonies. He breaks away and isolates himself in his apartment and his job, reducing his social contacts to practically nil. He’s bored now. He has so much free time on his hands he can do 10,000 pushups in a day just to pass the hours. Life slows down. The boredom makes him so restless he can barely sleep at night. He’s tired all the time and has little motivation. Work is tedious, almost unbearable. Bitter and depressed, he can’t stand the amusement and frivolity of others. He’s so disgusted with people he’d like to move away, find another place where life might be better (but where?). Even if he wants to be with his friends at this point, he’s been away from them for too long to be close to them again (as also happens in the song A Life Of Possibilities). When he tries talking to them they don’t seem to listen. He can tell just by the way they move, lean back in their chairs, shake their heads that they just don’t care about anything he says. No one tells it to him outright but he’s ostracized. Now he’s in a total rut. He’s alone and bored, completely isolated. He wants his friends back but makes no attempt to reconnect with them because he also hates his friends, hates how they don’t listen, how they care only for themselves. He sees them in passing ‘like highway signs’ which come and disappear and at this point he can’t even tell if they’re keeping their distance because he wants them to or because they want to stay away from him now. It’s a song about, paradoxically, feeling the same restlessness and isolation when you’re with people as when you’re without them and on your own. Morrison has dubbed this feeling ‘the jitters’ and I’m sure a great many of us have sometimes had jitters of our own. :) That’s my interpretation anyway! |
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