| Bright Eyes – A Scale, a Mirror, and Those Indifferent Clocks Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Whenever I hear "Now I know a disease that these doctors can't treat You contract it the day you accept all you see is a mirror and a mirror is all it can be a reflection of something we're missing" I think of the story of creation in the Bible... man being created in God/YHWH/whatever's image, and Eve taking from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The disease is becoming truly aware and knowing everything you lack inside, and that you can never obtain what you lack. In the story, man is made into God's image, but isn't made to be like God. After eating the fruit, they become aware of what they are missing. I also like that it can mean that you never see anything the way it really is. Everything you perceive is filtered through your thoughts and perceptions and gets distorted. There's also the way light reflects off of surfaces, then is processed by your eyes and then your brain... that takes time (too short for us to notice) so you never really see anything, only the light that reflects off of it. And that reflection is never from the immediate present. Everything we see is just light made into shapes that we interpret with all of our different minds. Sound is just vibration. We never actually touch anything due to electric repulsion. None of us have literally ever touched anything else, ever. Only the illusion of touch. So it's this knowledge of everything that we aren't, and this isolation, and when you finally see it, it's like a disease that will never go away. |
|
| IAMX – Song Of Imaginary Beings Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Lyrics... Her mother said if she couldn't love The physical way a woman should Then where else could she go? Where the sisters and the fathers can't save her soul? Send them in, see them on If she can't find a lover she'll fashion one Imaginary men Like the burnt-out poets in the hinterland The phoenix says The double says The serpent says The siren says Why use the word when the word means the belief? Why use the word when the word needs the belief? The hourglass sees what shelf-life does She asked exactly, tell me, what is love But breathing life alone? Just the words from prophets and religious shows? Imagine hurt, imagine tears She opened up until she disappeared But vanished hand in hand With all the long-lost children locked in Neverland The phoenix says The double says The serpent says The siren says Why use the word when the word means the belief? Why use the word when the word needs the belief? The phoenix says The double says The serpent says The siren says The phoenix says (burn for me) The double says (lie for me) The serpent says (beg for me) The siren says (die for me) ------- I never looked up the lyrics til now, and everywhere I looked says "Her mother said that she couldn't love". I never had trouble understanding that line just listening so I thought it was strange, because he definitely says "if she couldn't love". "Her mother said that she couldn't love the physical way a woman should, then where else could she go..." doesn't make sense. Grammatically a sentence is IF, then... AND the song just makes more sense with "if" anyway. |
|
| Bright Eyes – Easy/Lucky/Free Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
But it's all I'm doing now Listening for patterns in the sound Of an endless static sea But once the satellite's deceased It blows like garbage through the streets Of the night sky to infinity I think "endless static sea" is the universe, listening for patterns in the radio waves. Stars and planets give off radio signals... The earth is one of the sun's satellites, so once the earth dies it drifts aimlessly for eternity. |
|
| IAMX – President Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I think the lyrics sound more like this: They pull our strings, The animals, The blind that breed the hate Under their wing, Where science is, We follow what they fake For all you lonely boys, I will be president Oh, in all you sons of men, I can be accident Most fall in line They do the dance And salute the safest name Bored with their lives, Crying "socialize!" And throw all the beauty away For all you lonely boys I will be president In all you sons of men I can be accident |
|
| Bright Eyes – An Attempt to Tip the Scales Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
These lyrics have a lot of layers to them and can be interpreted a lot of ways. I've always felt like it has a lot to do with religion, which Conor often references in ways that make it sound like a drug. (I'm not religious, but my interpretation might make me sound that way, a little.) "Did you expect it all to stop at the wave of your hand? Like the sun is just going to drop if it�s night you demand" I feel like it's playing off of the creation story in the BIble, where God commands let there be light instead of darkness. It really seems like he's addressing the listener personally, and I think it has to do with depression. It's like... the world is going to keep going on the way it wants to, no matter how you're feeling. Night and the dark would also be references to depression... "Well, in the dark we are just air so the house might dissolve But once we are gone, who is gonna care if we were ever here at all?" This part is complicated for me. I think "in the dark we are just air" is like... when you're depressed (in the dark) you feel void... empty, devoid of anything, a black hole, just have nothing inside you. And I think the house refers to our bodies. Like in a depression you can feel so empty that you feel like you've disappeared entirely. I think it's also making a reference to the idea that something can only exist when it's being observed -- and in the "dark" no one can see you, and you can't see yourself anymore, so you might stop existing. "But once we are gone..." This line is obviously showing his doubt in God or any god's existence, but interestingly, it's a question instead of a statement. I also keep seeing this underlying religious theme -- "in the dark we are just air", I think about the "let there be light" bit again -- wasn't it in the beginning there was nothing? And THEN God said "Let there be light." I think that's how that goes. It sounds like a stretch, but it's something I keep noticing and it's throughout all the lyrics if you keep the religion idea in the back of your mind. :[ "So we trade liquor for blood in an attempt to tip the scales" Trade liquor for blood could be the obvious, or it could refer to partaking of the sacrament. Drinking the blood of Christ (wine) makes a person closer to God, or ... something. I'm not saying that he's referring to himself taking sacrament, it just seems cleverly put to mean both drinking too much and refer to the Catholic ritual. "Well, winter is going to end and I'm going to clean these veins again So close to dying that I finally can start living" "Clean these veins", if you refer back to partaking sacrament it makes sense, but these lines seem sarcastic in the context I've put it in. Although winter ending would signify the end of depression, it means summer will be coming along and "Summer's gonna come, it's gonna cloud our eyes again. There's no need to focus when there's nothing that's worth seeing" sounds more like a state of mindless oblivion, not being truly aware of what's around you and caught up in the meaningless details of life. So, I dunno. I don't interpret it as a religious song, I feel like it's kind of mocking, in a good way. Next time I listen to it I'll probably think it means something different, but for now I like it meaning this. :] |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.