| The Outline – Shotgun Lyrics | 6 months ago |
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You know... I know this is a reach, since this sort of thing probably wasn't widely discussed in the public consciousness in 2006 (not that I can tell, but I preemptively figure), but is the songwriter for this particular album neurodivergent at all? This resonates with my experience as someone diagnosed with both autism and ADHD, and it's not the only song on the album that's like that. Where do I even begin with unpacking this? In the first verse, you get the lines: "It's a shutdown, maybe/I got you in my sight/It's just a shadow, baby/It can't come to life/But it's the shadows, baby/They're quickest with the knife" Meltdowns, comfort figures, trying to run from your past before it consumes you. I can't speak to whether the latter is a universal experience or not, but at least for me, it's incredibly relatable. That's well and fine, but it's not where the bulk of my reading comes from. For that, you have both the chorus and the second verse. In the chorus, you get the lines "If I was a robot, would you love me anymore?" and "If I wore a mask, would you know" Essentially: if I were to you who I know I am to myself, would you still care about me? That's under the guise of affable self-loathing; conflating being authentic and natural with this image of inhuman, yet not inanimate. The first line itself is pretty telling, but the explicit mention of a mask seals the deal for me. And then you get into the second verse, and uhhhh... "It's a contract, baby!/ We're gonna make you sign/ It's a choice now, maybe/ But you could die tonight/ It's a whisper, baby!/ When your ears are blind" You know, I'm starting to think this isn't a stretch at all, actually. This isn't even remotely subtle; I love it. We start off with social contracts, disguised as choices, but which are, in reality, mandatory for any form of connection. Without that connection, you're pretty much dead! The details of this contract are not explicitly stated, however, they are whispered in your ear. The use of blind instead of deaf I find to be very intentional; whereas those who are deaf have to rely on less manufactured forms of language to navigate life, those who are blind rely entirely on their surroundings. If the details of a social contract are whispered into blind ears, the listener at least has a chance of ecolocating any nuances that are lost on them. But I've saved the best for last: "It's a scream, baby!/ We don't want your kind" Autistic narratives are typically centered on alienation. Through the chorus, we get a sense of this seeping into every encounter the speaker has, including those that are intimate. In these two lines, this alienation is spelled out explicitly for the audience: the feeling of being an outsider, practically screamed at over your differences. Yeah, no, I don't think this is that much of a reach, actually. This song is about autism. As for the shotgun itself, I haven't quite figured out what the significance of that is. There is the ever-so-slightly unpleasant fact that if you're on the spectrum, have lower needs than others, and an above-average IQ, you're more likely to experience suicidal ideation. Given the tone of the instrumental and how new-ish that information seems to be, I'd say it's more likely to be a burst of energy emanating out of the soul, scraping against imposed alienation, at all costs. If anything, this reading makes more sense in regard to the chorus, which reads as fairly introspective compared to the rest of the song. |
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