| The Tragically Hip – In View Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This song is about god. While watching the special on The Hour, with the Hip playing songs from their World Container album, Gord Downie said something very peculiar. "Here's one with absolutely no metaphor. It's all metaphor." I am not a religious person; atheist, in fact, but the first thing that popped into my head was that the metaphor is for god. And now, every time I listen to this song, that's all I can think of. That Gord Downie wrote this as a message to his god, or to a higher power, or anything else of that caliber. I love you, you know I do. (Yes, this can be about literally everything. But "you know I do" hints toward someone, or something which knows.) Yea, it's perfect. Well, it isn't and it is. (Speaks for itself; nothing is perfect, not even belief in religion.) I've been meaning to call you. I've been meaning to call you. Then I do. (He's been meaning to keep in touch spiritually, to "call", to pray. But, for some reason or another, he cannot bring himself to do that. That, I believe is the encompassing metaphor. A phonecall to god.) Phone rings once. Phone rings twice. Phone rings three times. (And this is where it gets a bit iffy. The phonecall is there, but why isn't anyone picking up? Is god not answering his prayers?) I am of you. (Could be a reference to how man was supposedly created in the image of god himself.) You are in everything I do. (This would be a shocker. Do all Hip songs have religious undertones? Or is Downie just using good old fashioned hyperbole here?) I trust you. That makes you true. (Pretty self explanatory. He trusts god, so god is true in his mind.) I don't care if it isn't the way it is. (He is willing to disregard evidence which points to there being no "god", at least in the traditional sense.) I am of you. You are always in view. (God is "in view" to him; that is, he always "sees" god, or maybe the thing he is morally supposed to do.) Yea, I am my will. But you are in everything I do. (Contrasts with "I am of you", by saying he has been given free will. He wills himself to be the person he is, but his actions are dominated by his belief in god.) In the Day Eraser's dark of night, In the Excited States, gone in plain sight, Under the wave or by cavelight, I lose, things change, but never in your eyes. (This is the most confusing lyric. If you boil it down to the basics, the sentence goes: "In the dark of night, in the Excited States, under the wave or by cavelight, I lose, but never in your eyes." WTF does that mean? This lyric may compromise the unity of the theory, but my guess is that it means that no matter where he searches for evidence for/against god, he cannot find it, but in god's eyes, that is what's supposed to happen?) And that's my theory. It works for the first three quarters of the song, but the last quarter is so cryptic that I can't find out what it means. If anybody could provide an interpretation of that last stanza, that would be great. |
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