| Radiohead – Reckoner Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I don't agree that there is an obvious and clear interpretation here. The lyrics are opaque, fragmented, incomplete and allusory. Who is the reckoner? Who can't take it with them - the reckoner or the reckoned? Who is dancing for whose pleasure? etc Here's my take. I'll go with the Faustian 'Reckoner'. This was a spirit who desired to own the soul of a human being. Some people live their lives owning parts of others, controlling and manipulating them in any number of ways. A banker may hold sway over someone's ability to own their own home, to start their own business, to raise a family, but despite being reckoners in more than one sense they are disinterested in the souls and only desire the money. A politician may control what is legal and what isn't for individuals, may have control over their safety and freedom. A business man may take perverse pleasure in having his staff do his bidding. And someone who is controlling in their relationships may be said to judge others as objects for their amusement and gratification. So this reckoner takes many forms. But the reckoner can't take the money with them. And, as in Faust, can't take a soul with him either. Because the soul is private and separate. You can hold someone under your spell to the extent that you control them, but as soon as they look away their mind becomes their own again. No matter how much influence you have, the feelings of another are eventually their own - people resent and detest those who control them. The reckoners may think of themselves as gods but their subjects reduce them to figures of ridicule, as fragile, ridiculous and faced by inevitable death and the loss of any meaning that came from their efforts. Minds separate. We may be in synchronisation, together, unified, like a wave on the ocean. Maybe someone started that wave and believes they control it. But when the wave hits the shore, blank, nothing, unseen, the wave doesn't exist any more. Two or more new waves are created. They move in other directions. The basis of life is the cell, which alone promulgates it's own survival. Without being conscious of it, it avoids threats to its unity, maintains an internal homeostasis. This individuality is written into every single part of our fibre - I am me and not the seat on which I sit. The abstract mind, the use of language, and our sharing parts of our identity with others, removes us from this truth. We may become part of a wave, not under our own control. But only so long as the illusion remains, or until it becomes unhelpful to us. Then the systems of emotion that represent our individual desire to survive and flourish will make us separate, but we will separate in the same way as others, into different strands, different colours of the rainbow again. The separation of white light into it's components is a beautiful metaphor and as a Pynchon fan takes me on many trains of thought. In it's broadest sense, white symbolises purity but it was shown to be the sum of everything, not a separate and special thing. In Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon alludes to all of the randomness of the growth of the cosmos, pre-history, history and countless individuals with their own interpretations, desires, parts of different stories, coming together chaotically to produce something bizarre and horrific like WW2. We look back at it and derive meaning from it by understanding what it meant to the people involved, and what we think of that. We forget that everyone came from a different direction and left on their own path. I dunno. Cool song tho. |
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| Metric – Collect Call Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Emily seems to often express a fairly depressed persona in her songs, along with a sentimental nature, a belief in her dreams. Hell, the album is called 'fantasies'.. Sick Muse contains the lines 'Watch out, cupid struck me with a sickness'. 'Everybody just wanna fall in love'. She recognises that her idea of love is a bit of a fantasy. Here I think she is confounded by her inability to instigate and feed the relationship. Bear these lines from 'Twilight Galaxy' in mind; 'Did I ask you For attention When affection Is what I need Thinking sorrow was perfection I would wallow Till you told me There's no glitter in the gutter There's no twilight galaxy' Blindness is my end to the album (forget Stadium Love, it sucks and sounds like an afterthought to pad out the album. Along with countless other Emily lyrics, it describes her as the passionate hero in the moment of crisis. Her dramatic, passionate side. I think Collect Call shows us the flip side. The lyrics here are a bit confusing in places but here goes. If the fire is out - If the heat of the relationship is at an ebb How you going to keep me warm? (She can't keep herself warm. And maybe the passion is all she's any good at. Maybe she struggles to nurture emotional closeness in the everyday) Supposing you let me (I can't figure this out in relation to the lyrics before or after. I used to believe she sang 'left me'). With the door wide open, no-body can leave (which at this point runs into...) I know it's a lie, I want it to be true (Is this a recognition of a perverted emotional dynamic? She acts passive and uncaring, leaving the door wide open for the SO to leave, but in her heart it's actually a plea for him not to... a way to be gratified by his staying) The rest of the ride, is riding on you (for the clearest statement of the theme, her passive stance) Over goodbyes we'll buy some place For wishing you could (I'll come back to this) Keep me closer I'm a lazy dancer. When you move, I move with you (she desires the closeness of a relationship built on more, but like a lazy dancer she can't lead, only follow him...also, move can mean to move emotionally, so maybe she is feeling numb to herself, and feels through the proxy of his emotions) If somebodies got soul... You gotta make them move. (Soul is such a cop-out word in lyrics! It could mean almost anything. Let's say it means someone has deep feelings. This is not incompatible with being numb on a day to day basis. In fact we hear her talk about her perception of herself as deep and heartfelt through this album and the preceeding one, often with humour and irony. But is she talking about herself here? Or her SO? It's unclear, so this could be a recognition that seizing the moment, taking the initiative, provoking emotions in the other, is essential. Either she is begging her SO to do this, which would be pretty self-pitying, or she is asking herself to step up. The final possibility is that she is talking about being resigned to the possibility of one of them finding another lover... she'd understand if it was him? or is she saying, if it happened to me, I would have to act on it.... which would maybe explain her passive stance.. leaving the door open) I know it's a lie, I want it to be true. (now things are really getting ambiguous. She could be saying that she knows it's not on him to make up the ground. She could be saying the whole 'soul' thing is a front, a self-delusion. She could even be saying the whole relationship is the lie she wants to be true, that the fire is out and she's not feeling it anymore, that the dependence on passion reveals the lack of true closeness... she has a dream where the other person will make up for her lack of emotional intimacy, but she knows she is kidding herself) Over goodbyes (how fatalistic is that? Idoes she realise it's just a matter of time?) we'll buy some place For wishing you could keep me closer....... (ahh... the act of saying goodbye may 'buy the space' for the dream to be reborn. at the moment where you look at the end of the relationship you start to feel what you would lose. The sense of loss is shared in that moment. Maybe this brings her the emotional connection she was looking for the whole time.) For wishing you could Keep me closer.... (and in that closeness, that moment of sentiment and drama, the relationship is reborn...her numbness is forgotten, she has even managed to expose her fragility... but the melancholic, self-pitying 'wish', the lie, is not addressed, but it's all she muster, and it will keep things going. And so, I believe, the song is about a pattern she knows will repeat, The passion of the dream, followed by the emptiness afterwards, followed by her emotional withdrawal... and so on) I think collect call is a great title. It's where you instigate communication without having to pay the price. |
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