submissions
| Jars of Clay – Light Gives Heat Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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@ bloomlvrchick I like this interpretation of "houses on the hill" meaning government. But I think it's clear that since that line appears directly after "You treat me like I'm blind", the speaker is using "fire" to mean something destructive and not the "fire of the spirit" you might like to commonly assume it to symbolize. Essentially, interference in the governments of such nations can cause a lot of upheaval, so going and trying to convert everyone there and use the state to "shine a light" on everyone else is a terrible approach. Church and state should be separated. |
submissions
| Jars of Clay – Light Gives Heat Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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@[murlough23:18038] I think this is basically correct, but your interpretation is so full of Christianisms that it sickens me. "come alongside" "brownie points" "convert people" "teachings of the Gospel" "God loves".
I think in more general terms, not just about "missionaries". Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart well captures how cultures feel to be inundated and overrun by a group that believes itself to be morally and culturally superior. That attitude would be laughable if it weren't so damaging. I am glad someone from within the church is willing to agree with those outside and decry its actions. |
submissions
| The Helio Sequence – Upward Mobility Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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It's definitely about a lover being unfaithful and lying about it. Personally I think the whole "cheating" mess is stupid and a direct consequence of our cultural expectation of monogamy, which is frankly unrealistic for many people. It's the lying that really hurts; it's the real sin. But somehow our protagonist is too enchanted or timid or weak to actually do anything even though he is hurt. Maybe this is intended just to make the lover know she isn't being so clever, that it's plainly obvious. |
submissions
| The Helio Sequence – Hallelujah Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[bombsmrh:12559] I got the sense it's about not being able to believe in religion and the simultaneous freedom and longing that causes. Looking in on those groups that can believe in god gives a nonbeliever some sense of personal displacement, sadness that we don't have such community.
It's not strictly true that atheists feel this way. I think back to the self-reinforcing, brainwashy community I had as a kid, and I both miss the people and am so glad I escaped. I've found a new community among technologists, scientists, and engineers, for a while even adopted the idea that science and philosophy can be a direct substitute for religion. But, although I think we can embrace community outside, it's not quite the same, not as close-knit. And though science and philosophy have much wisdom to give us, believing that anything is infallible can be troublesome, so they can not provide the same kind of assurance as blind faith.
But people are prone to blind faith everywhere, even in this new community. We want that assurance. But when people have the wrong ideas, they do the wrong things, regardless of where those ideas come from. I'm particularly concerned that science, despite recent failures (e.g. suggesting genital cutting is positive or suggesting fats are worse than sugars and that exercise can cure obesity) is increasingly given license to do whatever it wants in our world, because people don't understand that it can still go awry due to interpersonal politics, biases, or human shortcomings.
In the end, I'm left feeling like I'm hurling through space, constantly in existential crisis, secure in nothing and always grasping for something I can never reach. This song well-characterizes the sort of empty, ambivalent feeling a true skeptic carries with him everywhere. |
submissions
| CHVRCHES – Tether Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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I believe it's "I'm feeling capable of", not "I feel incapable of". I think it's meant to be victorious. |
submissions
| Mute Math – Armistice [Live] Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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It's about mutual forgiveness and compromise, between friends, lovers, groups, something. But the process is tiring. |
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| Mute Math – Walking Paranoia Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[pavelkomarov:8402] I just realized that "get right or get left" is a pun: directions, and in the rapture all nonbelievers will supposedly be left behind. |
submissions
| Mute Math – No Response Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[Phantom_causes:8374] They're specifically not a christian band. One of the members was raised a christian and bought it enough to sing in a CCM band before mutemath. And they sued Warner over being associated to religion. That's all we know. |
submissions
| Mute Math – Amendment Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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It seems to me the speaker feels lost, really wants something more to believe in but isn't sure where to look, is stuck listlessly drifting, wondering what he should latch on to. He's an odd soul, stuck between paradigms. |
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| Mute Math – In No Time Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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It's a beautiful end to the album, offers some kind of hope for the future based on nostalgia. Strange. |
submissions
| Mute Math – Walking Paranoia Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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I grew up in a religious home, but I often challenged it growing up. My beliefs were constantly evolving, some odd mishmash of the theology I was taught and my own conclusions, reached after dozens of hours of thought. Eventually I let it all go, which was liberating, but it was a very long process.
Similarly, Paul Meany sung in a religiously-affiliated band, but Mutemath has sued over being associated with religion at all. I think this song, the whole album really, reflects his and the others' evolving beliefs and how these put them out of place, somewhere between their roots and the mainstream.
In this song they speak of how some of their beliefs haunt them. They wonder if God is watching their sins. Yet they see "preachers on the prowl", preying on the gullibility of masses as religious leaders have for centuries. Finally they embrace their trajectory, proclaiming that if they are going to hell, they're doing it properly. |
submissions
| Mute Math – Allies Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Is it possible it's about the war on terror? Or is war an analogy for something else? |
submissions
| Walk the Moon – I Can Lift A Car Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[MUTANT:6247] I like this too, but I think it's more likely a breakup due to circumstance (She moves to Chicago.) than an actual death. |
submissions
| Foster the People – Ask Yourself Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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It's also about being ambitious I think. Maybe at some point life hasn't happened how you wanted it to, and you have to ask yourself whether you can be at peace with that and find happiness anyway. |
submissions
| Sea Wolf – The Orchard Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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The not-narrator is stricken by the beauty of the scene, as is the narrator, and says so in a sort of off-hand way: There is so much here we can't see, but that does not mean it isn't part of reality. The narrator seems to recognize this as an assertion that there is more to the scene than the natural and thinks to himself 'It's great you think that, but I have no need of such beliefs.' In that perfect, beautiful moment, there is no reason to fear anything, no reason to invent. There is only to experience and gape in awe.
The next stanzas paint a similar scene, and the speaker this time actively asserts that what he can see is "all there was", as if he is philosophically a staunch materialist. But the fact he sees no magic in the world in that sense does not at all diminish his awe for what he sees, and we learn of his great sense of love for and kinship with his fellow. He takes immense pleasure in everything.
It's lovely. |
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