| Okkervil River – Another Radio Song Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[P:36882] to the G @[andrew1133:36883] then again, "blue-white charmer" doesn't really fit the bill with me, like some other aspects of the story. I have never been a charmer. I have always been entirely unable to charm anyone. I gave my emotional state and thoughts about others away, trusting others and expecting them to be as open as I was, absorbing what other people said to or about me with no awareness of their intentions. | |
| Okkervil River – Another Radio Song Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[P:36880] to the G @[andrew1133:36881] then again, "blue-white charmer" doesn't really fit the bill with me, like some other aspects of the story. I have never been a charmer. I have always been entirely unable to charm anyone. I gave my emotional state and thoughts about others away, trusting others and expecting them to be as open as I was, absorbing what other people said to or about me with no awareness of their intentions. | |
| Okkervil River – Another Radio Song Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[P:36853] to the G @[andrew1133:36854] There is only now. There isn't then. So just breathe it in. |
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| Okkervil River – Another Radio Song Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[andrew1133:36839] feel free to contact me at edenwylie27@gmail.com even if it's just to hurl abuse, i won't fight against it. i just want to understand. ask any question you want and i will answer honestly. |
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| Okkervil River – Another Radio Song Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[P:36837] to the G you get me. @[andrew1133:36838] does not. the "list of favourite pillows" finally makes sense to me with your help. i have lived a life of constantly seeking shallow comforts to cope with an overwhelming pain that i could not bear to confront. with a few relatively minor exceptions i have not deliberately caused suffering to others in this life. i would not allow myself to. consciously i wanted to encourage people to get along and feel better about themselves, although i reacted to the systems and "machines" that i got increasingly paranoid about and probably made other people paranoid in the process. the "missing children" were not real, but imagined, representations of what happened to me as a child, the "monster" being my internalisation of that treatment which i repressed until it became an entity of its own that would emerge from time to time only in imagination to torment me and my trapped inner child, whilst finding slight channels to the outside world in slips that i did not understand but annoyed the hell out of other people, patterns of self-sabotage and even causing my body to do pointless things like putting things in places i would never find them then forgetting (which triggered meltdowns and sabotaged me further, while drawing out the wrong inner reactions to suffering and injustice). this all prevented me from growing up, and excuses fits in with the metaphor as well. my conscience has indeed awakened in exactly the way you describe, after years of building up an imaginary world to make sense of /escape from a world that i was completely unable to understand as i could not sense anyone's intentions and trusted anybody who showed me even a morsel of approval. i have taken so much and given little in return (although was not cruel and reached out to / comforted those lonely, bullied souls who couldn't hide themselves). i have written many songs that could be described as a "black diapason", though there are others which are more like a call for the emergence of honesty and love. the "moonlight wisteria" is a Powerful line for me, because my love for people always came from a distant place that only a few could recognise, while most were just put off when they saw me pouring out negativity - grown out of utter emotional/spiritual isolation and pain - with no filter (as i only ever wanted / was able to express my true feelings, i had no perception of the phenomenon of psychological deception). as soon as i became aware of this phenomenon, i had a severe psychotic break, went conspiracy-nuts and - in hospital - was immediately surrounded by individuals who played terrifying mind games with me to make this paranoia worse (i'm sure they had their reasons). this put me on an incredibly unstable path that made me believe i was the only one who understood, uninformed though i was, and i felt it necessary to warn the world, causing harm in the process though i didn't recognise it. i became more and more impulsive and less and less thoughtful towards those around me, eventually i went full blown schizophrenic and couldn't trust anybody. then, eventually, i came to accept the concept of karma/reincarnation, and i realised that there must be a purpose to all of this that i could not accept. i do not remember my past life, and i have never identified with the sort of thing that this album (and others) is perhaps suggesting it entailed. i am Not a "monster". i'm just a lonely, abused, misunderstood and alienated boy who could never accept himself or the world into which he was born. i did have a darkness in me, but i have been fighting against it all my life. please recognise that andrew, and don't be so quick to judge those you do not understand, remember the "For Real" video? i'm the little boy that's trapped in that thing! i'm pretty sure the "burning" part is literal, and i obviously don't look forward to it. but i'm still here, and will be until it materialises. who knows? maybe it simply is a metaphor for the beautiful parts of me overcoming the confused parts that are ensnared in self-involved cycles of thought. i'd like to think that's true, but i'm not getting my hopes up. your interpretation of "bless this tiny alley" is so beautiful to me. my suffering is - though very present in forms i can tolerate - seriously repressed, tears come rarely and either come out of nowhere, are brought out by recognition of other people's sadness or are triggered by certain pieces of music (Robert Wyatt's "Alifib/Alifie", Joanna Newsom's "Sawdust & Diamonds" and OR's "A Stone", to name a few). hopefully there will be a time when i can just it all come out, and i can finally start healing, no matter how painful the process is. "golden curls of envied hair." i had blonde curls when i was a toddler, my brother was jealous. "head hanging with horns from your father." my father was incredibly unwell and took his life when i was 8, after weeks of - apparently - spending time in a room with me alone while my brother was distracted with the computer downstairs, supposedly saying and doing very disturbing things (it was gathered from the things i said afterwards). i have an image of his face, i do not remember what he said/did. i am the Black Sheep Boy and (though i am/have a Lunar Tic(k)) i am Not afraid of the sun anymore. make of that what you will, help me understand it even because i certainly don't. hate me if you want. i have nothing but love for you. |
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| Okkervil River – A Stone Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[DRN:36836] it probably has multiple intended meanings and/or can be interpreted in multiple ways. that's what makes it brilliant. here's one interpretation no one's mentioned: the stone is a computer. think about it. |
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| Okkervil River – A Stone Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[pinder:36835] totally agree, but did you ever consider that the girl is the narrator, while the guy she loves spends all his time on a computer (the stone)? that possibility has an interesting correlation to the section "if stones could dream, they'd dream of being laid side by side, piece by piece and turned into a castle for some towering queen they're unable to know" think of the internet (the castle), all the cold and emotionally distant men connecting to it, having no comprehension of what it really is or who they're serving by attaching themselves to it (towering queen, AI?). while the real love that's right in front of them laments that they are giving their attention to an inanimate object (the stone) and becoming stones in the process. white veins (wires), hard grey (machines in general but typical computer colour/texture), heavy weight (the impact on the psyche of all the obscenity on the internet that they consume, consciously detaching from it while subconsciously bearing a heavy weight), clumsy shape (the endless stream of logos and ads and all sorts of images that they absorb uncritically/clumsily). i think this song has a lot to do with how people - especially men - get so much of their emotional "nourishment" from computers nowadays, and is narrated by someone (likely a woman) who wants their own lover to just log off and take in the beauty of the world around them, but their deep misery is soothed by the world on the screen just enough to keep them hooked and not have to face what makes them miserable. |
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| Neutral Milk Hotel – Two-Headed Boy Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[mushyoldbastard:36666] i like your interpretation. it takes a perspective that thinks of the "Two Headed Boy" as being an actual person, and builds its framework from that fundamental understanding, whereas most interpretations seem unable to escape all the notions of historical and cultural reference and lose the person being described in the process. i have my own interpretation that differs from yours, but not hugely from where i'm sitting. it falls in line with the album's recurring theme of reincarnation, and is essentially that the "Two Headed Boy" is the reincarnation of hitler. the base concept of the song fits with this, as such a reincarnation (after time inbetween lives) would be caught in a struggle to fix the damage caused, between the self that is born longing to heal the damage (like Charlie Chaplin's impersonation right at the end of "The Great Dictator"), and the many lifetimes of pain that led to them committing such a horror in the first place that try to establish control again and are fuelled by the damage itself, resulting in a person who is totally split in their perception of themselves and the world, and spends their life trying to do good, while suppressing a hidden darkness. i can see how such a split might be a natural reaction to the modern world in many males also though, which is what makes it so relatable. where our perspectives mostly differ is that where you seem to believe that JM has love and compassion for this person, my perception is that he wants this person to suffer in balance to the suffering they caused. the line "in the dark we will take off our clothes" might refer to the haunting of the Two Headed Boy in his dreams by the phantoms of those he hurt, especially when preceding the line "they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine" which sounds like a torture device to me, though could potentially be the effect of Digital (fingers, 10/01...) technology tormenting/enlightening the boy's mind. "All is breaking everything that you could keep inside", it would only be natural that the brain of the reincarnation of hitler would hide that fact in any way it could. i can't speak for most of the lyrics, but the lines at the end: "i will take you and leave you alone" being left alone is imaginably what JM would want to do with such a character, that they may explore within to be able to reflect, "and all you did will wait until the point that you let go" speaks for itself regarding my interpretation, "all you did" would be something the Two Headed Boy likely would be almost incapable of allowing himself to remember, and would have to wait until he stopped resisting the truth. i could be entirely wrong though. reincarnation might not be what i think it is. the echoes of such an atrocity would likely resonate throughout the minds of millions of people causing such a split to occur, and the song might not be directed at a single person but rather to the psychological phenomenon of the split - caused by empathy - between the id and the superego that occurs within all boys to some degree at some point as they balance what they want with their recognition of how that wanting affects others, channelled by the thankfully growing influence of women in society. notice how JM uses the word "all" throughout the album, emphatically (through both lyrical and musical context), there is something to this i think... |
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| Jamie T – Sticks N' Stones Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Good interpretation, I like that. He doesn't have 'laddish roots' though, kind of an act. He was middle class and went to a 20k private school. Still a good song though, because all art lives through interpretation so the reality behind the lyrics is almost irrelevant | |
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