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No, just no.\n\n"cotton preshrunk displays games we play. colors run and colors fade."\nthis refers to both consumerism, as well as in the era how youths would associate themselves by the bands they liked. However, for today\'s purposes, it can just be reduced to: people associate their identity by the brands they wear. \n\n\n"i can\'t win. my skin was shrinking when she told me don\'t worry honey.\nyou can\'t look at the sky without looking right through it."\n\nAgain, he is getting frustrated with how vapid this is... when someone matter-of-factly just tells him: \'don\'t worry. You can\'t look at the sky, without looking right through it.\'. Given this phrase shows up twice in this album, I think someone really did tell him this ... it must have made and influence, right? \n\nBasically, there are two ways of going about this: common sense says, that it was in reference to all these fake people. Yeah, they\'re transparent/ have no substance, but they help you to see the greater picture. This place you\'re playing a show! What\'s beyond this place! just trust yourself and keep moving when someone\'s fake. \n\nThe other interpretation comes from the title. \nIf I was a scientist and trying to decipher something like, social behavior. I might start with trying to derrive where it was coming from. Why they engaged in it. What was it\'s function socially. \n\nHe does that well in the song. It\'s for status. \n\nBy understanding that social mechanism and pushing beyond it, you can manipulate or understand that variable to the point where you can master it: like a scientist. \n\nHe is basically saying while they are a tool for some people to gain cultural capital, he is also the one who understands this enough to use it for his own benefit, due to that quotation. \n\nI suppose in the same way as his absolute worship of that one person he mentions in \'puddle splashers\'....\n\n\n"i can\'t win. i can\'t win. i can\'t win. i can\'t win. i can\'t win." \nbecause no matter what identity he chooses to take on, it\'s a false identity based on consumer trends and a desire to belong rather than representations of who we are as people, and what we stand for. \n\n"now my tongue has tangled me toothless. and we don\'t have a thought between us.\nin this one light room in this neon museum the walls itch in closer.\ni remember every conversation (i remember everything) i forgot to have.\nstarchy retort scripted questions i never cared to ask about.\nstarchy product scripted people i never asked to care about."\nIn attempting to conform to social expectations, he realizes there are certain things he cannot say. \nThough, in my personal case, living in a foreign country, I take this in a different sense, as in that: I cannot communicate certain things, and so I remember every interesting conversation I could never have, as everyone else insists on boring one dimensional conversations out of politeness, and me out of limititations of expression. \n\nYeah, but he literally mentions products in the fourth line. He is basically saying that while our clothes are meant to represent fake demenors, our conversations do as well. We meet up in neon lighted spaces to try to elevate our \'cultural capital\' through wearing the clothes and saying the right things. Yet this is entirely vapid. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n"i can\'t pick a side to pick a fight on. it\'s more of me than i am of it."\nThe singer, probably influenced by the backlash against emo at the time (yep, this was proto-emo, crazy, right?) but also in reflection over how individuals around them constructed their identities through clothing and symbols of belonging. Those symbols and affilitiations fade. He can\'t see why he should pick an identity to back. The influence of consumerism isn\'t working on him. HE STATES THAT THE SHIRT HAS MORE INFLUENCE OVER WHO HE IS THAN WHAT IT IS. Indicating that he understands that brands and consumerism have an effect on how we present ourselves. However, this doesn\'t always work the other way around. Afterall, brands construct their image on desireability and trends, not on how their real consumers develop and grow through their lives. |
