| Modest Mouse – Dog Paddle Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Correction! "I eat veggie burgers but inside it feels like murder" Vegetarians would understand this one... |
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| Modest Mouse – What People Are Made Of Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"On the first page of the book of blue it read 'If you read this page, than that'll be your death' By then it was too late" The book of blue is the rules of living on Earth: once you are born (open the book and read the page) then you're bound to the rules (that you'll one day die). "And you wound up on an island of shells and bones that bodies had left" This is not a metaphor at all. Land is dirt and rocks, which are from dead organic matter from millions of years ago. We are all bound to an island of the old shells and bones of all living things. "And the one thing you taught me 'bout human beings was this They ain't made of nothin' but water and shit" Again, this is not a metaphor. Literally, what is all life made of? We are essentially just matter recycled from what's already here. The land is literally made of the excrement of bugs and worms that have processed the mass of things once living. Of course, when it's screamed out and with Issac Brock's attitude, this final sentence manages to be both empathetic to our biological-determinist earth-bound nature, and also scathingly harsh and pissed. Genius. |
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| Modest Mouse – Life Like Weeds Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"In this life like weeds": As opposed to plants in a garden, weeds grow wild, without intention, and unwittingly steal nutrients from other plants. He means that people and all living things live by using up what's around them out of their own blinding need to survive. "I know where you're from, but where do you belong?" We are all from somewhere, sure, but belonging is different; belonging requires meaning, belonging requires intention. And life is like weeds, i.e. wild, unwitting, without our knowledge of intention or any grand design. "You're just a rock to me": Typically, saying someone is a rock is a good thing, as a rock has long signified stability. But "you're just a rock" in a life like weeds means something negative: you're in my way. You're not even a living thing, merely an obstacle. Then later in the song he says it in a different tone, and takes out the "just." Now it seems he's bending the meaning of "you're a rock" to be something positive. |
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| Modest Mouse – Heart Cooks Brain Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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@Joanofbark: The lyrics "We tore one down and erected another there, the match of the century: absence versus thin air" are clearly referring to city development (in a negative light), a big theme across the whole album The Lonesome Crowded West. "We tore one down and erected another there" meaning whatever building was there was replaced with yet another, as opposed to just letting the land be as it always had been before development. That's "the match of the century": an unused lot of land being perceived as merely a building's "absence," or an unused lot of land being perceived as the natural nothing of "thin air" it should be. |
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