Eskimo Blue Day Lyrics
A powerful song about humans and the environment...one of my personal favorite Airplane songs. This song should get an awful lot of airtime with the current global climate crisis, IMO.
The human dream doesn't mean shit to a tree.
So true.
Love this song. The comments above are pretty much dead on with respect to the song's environmentalist themes. I think one additional dimension to the human-trees dynamic is that trees (and other species) don't even comprehend us because they're utterly alien to us. Just as we humans can't fathom how (or if) they think or dream, they can't understand or care about our ideas, values, etc.
I've always liked that the bridge of the song is about the bridge of a guitar or other stringed instrument: "Change the strings and the notes slide/Change the bridge and the strings shift down/Shift the notes and the bridge sings". A connection between these lines and the verses first made sense to me after I tried to adjust the intonation on my guitar -- a procedure that includes making adjustments to the height and angle of its bridge. Unlike tuning the guitar, in which you focus on the pitch of each string individually, intonation affects all strings at once. A small mistake to correct one string can put ALL strings out of adjustment; shift the bridge to bring one string into proper position and you may put the others out of whack. Everything's interrelated, like tundra snows, the African sea, icicles and sulphur springs.
Environmental concerns, yes, but more specifically, man's self-importance and the fact that all his great works, thoughts, institutions, etc., mean nothing to an Earth that has had many life forms come and go over its long history, the insignificance of man's pomposity.
most of it doesnt seem to have much meaning, but some parts definitely have an environmental message. The sound at the end of the song is a big tree falling (apparently after being chopped down).
very deep to natural theme, i like it,
¡Consider how small you are Compared to your scream The human dream Doesn't mean shit to a tree ¡
its perfect, i always think about it we are so small and believe we are the best, but what really is the best is the nature, a tree worths more than some humans, ANIMAL GAME FOR ME!!
i like that wording "the pomposity of man". i had this song in mind during a debate in my high school environmental science class last year. someone on the "go ahead and keep on choppin' on" side said "survival of the fittest". i said "oh, well in that case the exsistence of trees has far outlasted amd will always have outlasted whatever the length of the exsistence of mankind ends up being. they even live longer naturally than humans do, and no body's cutting us down, cept other humans sometimes. We're fit, we're not fit for apocolypse. On that note, this songs a little unsettling at times. We are as life forms as insignificant or significant as dinosaurs, and other extinct creatures. Eventually some kind of being i can't even begin to comprehend in my wildest dreams, nightmares, or trips is gonna be digging up the bones of my kind and bein like "what the fuck is that, i needa keep diggin and find some answers." only difference is itll be a little more organized. maybe not in comoparison to what organization would mean to them. we my be entirely inferior. maybe not. maybe we're more significant cause we might actually fuck this up so bad there isn't a planet for anything after us. subconsciously selfish. more pomposity. "blah blah I blah blah I blah ME. MINE. Blah blah. Needa print money, people want to make money, needa build more homes people wanna have more babies than they can physically or economically, or at least properly raise." but the human dream doesn't mean shit to a tree.
oh forgot to mention, if all goes well those uncomprehendable life forms that dig up all the bones we so well posotioned for them will probably still walk through a few forests regardless of whatever became of us.
Haha, it's almost like a psychedelic version of Shelley's Ozymandias. Though, naturally, Shelley could never sing like Grace...