| Clutch – Texan Book Of The Dead Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This song is about the falsehood of trendy new age ideas about spirituality, mostly about Timothy Leary's studies on LSD, and the spiritual following they gathered. It starts with: So you say you want to go to Heaven, Well I got the plans. It walks like the Sasquatch And it breeds like Kubla Khan. He's selling a new path to enlightenment, or heaven. Like most new age ideas about spirituality, it centers around one person's "discovery". Also like new age spirituality, the concepts are very obscure, difficult to grasp by design, so that people devote themselves to striving for enlightenment without ever reaching it, because the path is a false one. When he says, "It walks like sasquatch", sasquatch refers to enlightenment. People spend their lives trying to follow it's footsteps and find it, but they can't because it doesn't exist. Kubla Khan was a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 after an opium induced dream. In this case, the content is unimportant. What's important is that the poem was met with overwhelming negative criticism when it first came out. It was only years later, and after his death, that the poem started to become popular, and people started to find a lot of meaning in it. So when it says "but it breeds like Kubla Khan", it means that the idea is rejected until later on, when the original created is dead, and then he is viewed as a prophet, and the ideas put forth by the creator start to spread. The song is about drug induced spirituality, but there's no real allusion to drugs yet. In original dialect, It's really quite cryptical. There are many copies around, But this my man is the original. This part refers to the fact that these ideas are popular because they aggrandize the individual. "In the original dialect, it's really quite cryptical" implies a certain pretentiousness, that the person speaking has read and understands the original, attributing a false intellectualism to his actions and beliefs, like a pothead who pretends that smoking pot is an artistic experience that they do to gain a greater understanding of the universe, rather than to just get high. And of course, the speaker claims to possess the original, presumably because of the self aggrandizing nature of their beliefs, they are special because of their secret knowledge. It's given me powers, But kept me low. Many have scorned this, Modern day Pharisees fat with espressos. Again, the speaker believes that he is special because of his knowledge or beliefs, even though they're false. If you've ever talked to a conspiracy theorist, they believe that because they're much smarter than the average person, they know the "truth" about, say, the JFK assassination. Part of the reason they believe what they do is because in their mind it elevates them above others, or gives them power. People's mocking of their beliefs only reinforces the idea that they're the victim of other people's ignorance, and convinces them of how right their cause is. In the bible, much of Jesus Christ's teachings are rebukes of the ideas held by the Pharisees, and by extension the rest of the area. The individual in the song sees himself as sort of a modern day Christ, and the people who disagree with him as the Pharisees who champion wrong ideas. Be leary of Timothy, Clear light and all that. If you want light go stare at the sun. Hell, that boy don't know crap. This part is a direct reference to Timothy Leary. There is a Tibetan Buddhist text called "Liberation Through Hearing During The Intermediate State", or "Bardo Thodol". It's essentially a guide through the spirit's path after death. The first stage, chikhai bardo, is the moment of death, when one experiences the "Clear Light of Reality". Timothy Leary's defining work on psychedelics was entitled "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead". It was an instruction manual for finding spirituality through psychedelic drugs based around Bardo Thodol, which was commonly known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, due to it's subject matter. It talked a great deal about the concept of the "clear light of reality" and finding it through drugs. The entire song is based around this concept, and obviously the title of the song is taken from it as well. This section of the song is no longer mocking the idea, it's a straightforward message - spirituality is not found in drugs, and people that think it can be don't know crap. If you want to know Paradise, And you want to know Hell, Want to drink that cool clear liquor, Better dig a little deeper in the well. Now the song goes back to mocking the idea, saying that spiritual truth is an intoxicant, and if you want to know it you need to do more drugs. You want a mantra? You want to know? You want that mantra? Well here you go. One for the money, Two for the show, And a knickknackpaddywack Give the Lord a handclap. Ooeeooahahtwingtwangwallawallabingbang Ooeeooahahtwingtwangwallawallabingbang The speaker in the song offers a "mantra", or a spiritual guide to truth, and then follows it up with meaningless sayings followed by nonsensical jargon. Essentially, it's saying that when you get to the core of these beliefs, it's all BS. It is written. I have spoken. So put this in your pipe And smoke it. And finally, he reinforces the idea that he has some kind of special knowledge because of the powers granted to him by drugs, so go ahead and do drugs yourself if you want to gain the same knowledge. |
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