| Guns N' Roses – Coma Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This has recently overtaken Estranged as my favourite GN'R song. It's so musically complex, and the lyrics speak to me in a very particular way. I think most people here have gotten pretty close to the meaning in the first few parts: the desire for isolation, taken to the extremes of death or brain-death. But there's one detail of the final rant that no one here has focused on, so let me give my two cents. Starting with the part "You live your life like it's a coma..." I noticed something a couple of years back. It starts focusing on the second-person pronoun "you" where beforehand the song was sung in the first person. Now, this might sound like a minor grammatical quibble, but what if it's more important than that? Perhaps the character singing the final portion of the song is not Axl at all, or any part of his psyche. It is, literally, someone else. I always felt that this song involves self-restraint when it comes to suicide. Perhaps Axl doesn't want to die, but a COMA might be seen as a bit more acceptable. In the first few parts, there are a number of lines where he's clearly searching for an answer. For example: "Please understand me/I'm climbing through the wreckage/Of all my twisted dreams/But this cheap investigation just can't stifle all my screams/And I'm waiting at the crossroads/Waiting for you..." More than anything, this is a song of self-discovery. Where I'm going with this is that in the last part, Axl gets what he was asking for. Someone else finally steps in and gives him an answer to his questions of why nobody cared about him. And the answer this other person gives him is complicated. First of all, the person says, we have been worrying about you. We may not have reacted in a way that was comforting to you, but we've been there, bailing your ass out when you get into situations like that. You, Axl, just haven't wanted to see it. Ultimately, it's up to you to figure things out ("No you don't need a doctor, no one else can heal your soul"). When I realized this about this song, there was one part that was especially chilling for me, and that's right at the end: And I wish that I could help you With what you hope to find But I'm still out here waiting Watching reruns of my life When you reach the point of breaking Know it's gonna take some time To heal the broken memories That another man would need Just to survive This is the answer that Axl has been needing. He needs to know why other people haven't been able to truly help him deal with his problems on his own terms. And the reason is because other people have their own shit to deal with. People have to keep their distance from Axl because what he's dealing with is too close to what others have been dealing for them to allow themselves to get to close. It will impact them as well. This is what I think is meant by the person talking about "reruns of [his] life." That leaves only one thing he can tell Axl: it's going to be complete hell. Axl will "reach the point of breaking." The only comfort is that Axl will be able to pull through it, because he is even stronger than people who've been through similar angst before him. After all, he's gone a long time trying "to heal the broken memories that another man would need just to survive." And yes, Axl has survived. With that epiphany in mind, Axl finally allows himself to come back to the real world and out of his coma, where he has found the stillness he sought. |
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