| Amanda Palmer – Have to Drive Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I believe this song is about the conflict between true desire and the monotony of everyday life. Amanda refers to morning a lot, culminating in the last stanza when she refers to the point in the morning when you wake up and have a sort of out-of-body experience, and it takes a moment to remember what you have to do during the day. But during that moment, all of your desires and needs come rushing back to you. Instead of acting upon them, however, we settle for the monotony of everyday life, summarised in the act of driving (to work, for example) or commuting in general. As for the deer, I believe that this is a metaphor for her true desires - i.e. our natural instincts. In her monotonous act of driving to work, she kills the deer and with it the option to do what she truly wants as opposed to what she feels she has to do. I think that it is no coincidence that we do truly know whether she is saying 'deer' or 'dear' - while she is talking to the animal, she could just as easily be talking to herself - the part which represents the part of herself driven by natural desires. "It's cold outside...", "We tried to dig..." - here she is trying to justify to herself why she is subjecting to herself to this monotony. "Spin the bottle, pick the victim", "Fighting the jury...", "I suffer mornings ... powerless and small"- a sign of the conflict between what she wants and what she has to do - feeling that she has to drive makes her feel powerless; as if she has no control over her life. One of them must be sacrificed. "We will save ... mad mankind" - she wants to save others from this monotony, acknowledging that mankind is mad for choosing monotony over true desire. "Forgetting everything we saw ... at the car" - The song returns to the morning, and she forgets everything about the deer and the conflict that she recognised with herself, as if it were all a dream. Instead, she reverts to her normal, monotonous way of life. The use of a choir, strings and the generally spiritual and almost holy feel to the song add to the sense of epiphany - how the scarring experience with the deer helped her to understand herself. Also the theme of sacrifice in the song is a familiar theme within religion. The one thing which really confirmed my interpretation to myself was reading this quote from C.S. Lewis: “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.” |
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