| Modest Mouse – The Tourist and the Tortoise Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I get this pretty strong feeling that this song is a fable about a school field trip to a national park, or at least a symbolic one. The eerie "tourists of the dead" line comments on the fascinating tendency for people to seek out memorials and places of mourning to vacation to. I liken certain lines to the blasé nature people may regard monuments and the like. "Pack a lunch...toss a map on the ground. It isn't accurate anyway..." Is it not just a place to eat your lunch? Who cares what we are looking at? Let's keep walking. In places of great historical significance, we may not comprehend the historical weight of a place so much as we superficially survey their surroundings. They are tourists in their own heads, not of the historical space. There is a struggle in the song; a disconnect between the self and history, both personal history and national. The very term tourist suggests one who is just passing through, and by extension it is someone who experiences that very disconnect. Even the repetition of the line " I think I am ready to go" and "let's walk on" seems to continually suggest movement over contemplation; it is the irony of being able to walk away from something as looming as history. The Tortoise and the Tourist parable seems non sequitur, but it ties in with the theme of disregard, taking on the theme in the form of a didactic fable (imagined, for my own part, as being retold by a teacher). It strongly calls to the themes of imperialism and greed, especially with the plight of the Native Americans. It is not too far fetched either, because the song which precedes it is "God is an Indian and You're an Asshole", a lighter take on that exact idea, which suggests the album has that as a running theme. This song is my favorite partly because it was led to a profoundly fascinating interpretation. The song seems to ask us: should we be tourists anywhere else but our own head? Are we to be responsible for anyone other than our own lives? Or are we to walk forever with the ghosts of the past? Is it our responsibility to do so? That is my own personal view point. I listened to this song a lot while walking the National Mall in DC, so that probably informed my opinion. |
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