| The Shins – Turn a Square Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I don't know about you guys, but to me, it has nothing to do with cheating nor this "perfect girl" theory you have, though it kinda leans to that. To me, it's about this guy who meets this girls that everybody adores, so his head's like a kite. But he then notices that she's also the kind of sedentary girl that will never leave her hometown: "to town! where your feet leave no prints on the ground", whereas he's the nomad kind of guy (my sort of personality too): "Have I left my home just to whine in this microphone?" and "Can't afford to be just one in a flock" are proofs that he doesn't want to stay in a small town his whole life like the majority of people do, like this girl who is "after such a well made lock who was classically trained to give up". And this gives us the opinion of the "whining" poetic voice: everyone that doesn't move around a little in this big world is giving up. And we can confirm this opinion with "And my friends know I've tried" and "I can't just stay the course", course that is "classically" imposed by society (study, marry, have a family, a big house...). Anyway, I can too see why you think all those other things, but we're accustomed to see the world as we are... "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are." So you've got a piece of me in this interpretation. What do you think? |
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| The Shins – The Past And Pending Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Mmkay, I love this song so much I gave a try to squeeze the most I could from the abstract lyrics James always gives us. "As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn we settle down to cut ourselves apart. cough and twitch from the news on your face and some foreign candle burning in your eyes." Autumn is also fall, so setting light to a fall means that it has just begun. The poetic voice is evidently introducing the context for the rest of the song, as ~they "cut" themselves apart; this metaphorizing verb implies blood, suffering, something usually followed by a fall. Meaning that they're no longer "they", as they are now apart. Coughs and twitches are involuntary reactions of the body, caused, in this case, by news from a face with distracted eyes, eyes that now see from other source of light. We could interpret this as the companion of the poetic voice, whose mind was stolen by "someone" who set light to this fall, involuntarily, perhaps. "Held to the past too aware of the pending chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale. enter the fog another low road descending away from the cold lust, your house and summertime." After the cutting news, this mind goes through a period of analyzing what that relationship was, whatever was, and now is conscious about the future of thoughts and experiences that awaits him. Now dawn has caught them apart and plans to "sell" them to the world, this means that time, represented by dawn, will be the only thing responsible for their future being. "Into the fog", just extends this sloped uncertainty, a blurry unknown descending path, far away from the warmth that comes with the companion's house in which the poetic voice laid and now sees it as something good, something that provided him with comfortness. "Blind to the last curse of the fair pistols and countless eyes a trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love." I'm not sure about the first line of the chorus. The poetic voice is telling us about how it's blind to the last curse, it cannot see anything but "fair pistols", which could be the image of the inner fights scrutinized by countless eyes, the many points of view of this situation. Now it finds a discordance in its companion's behavior, which is leaving the poetic voice with a trail of wounds by following a reckless route. The thought of the companion is apparently confusing. The sun was a common source of light and warmth, and now it's turned into a lightless, lifeless volatile object, which ironically turns off their own torch, a doused memory of fire. And now he spends his time "dissecting love", and we're brought to the final consequence of the initial cut; by dissecting something we're acknowledging its death for further analysis of its parts, searching for internal causes of death. This is done by writing this song, dissecting this love with words and thoughts. "Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay offer me little but doting on a crime. we've turned every stone and for all our inventions in matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all." This is the final moment. Now our guy it's in the stage of bearing with the break-up. The poetic voice is fading and it says that keeping the memory of the loving past just dotes on the crime of hurting himself: thinking about it and being held to the past just feeds his increasing sadness. Turning every stone means that he's been searching ways to cope with his love loss, but it cannot be helped, there's no invention that helps us all with love losses. We've no recourse at all. I enjoy this song very very much though it's deeply sad and reflexive. It talks about a very common feeling, love loss, which includes any form of losing a loved one. From simple causes of divergence to complex ones: from having a fight, finding another one to love, or cheating; to great fights, separation by distance, and death, the most complex one. I love how poetic the stages of love loss are described here. And I love The Shins and the marvelous way James uses the only tools he has to directly communicate his feelings, music and lyrics. note: my analysis never discriminates the factor of death, and if you think about it, it can be very shocking; oh, how I love The Shins. |
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