Efils' God

This song is called efil's god because eels have sampled an earlier song-dog's life- and played it backwards.

It's about dying. "Splitting this hunk of clay," among a plenthora of other blatant allusions to slowly dying. It's a common idea in various relgions that Man was made from clay.

this song is really amazing because the key line has more double meanings that you can shake a stick at. Before I get into all of them though, lets talk about what the song means a little bit.

We know that this album was made after E's mom died of cancer, and his sister committed suicide, so the meaning gets a lot more clear when you look at it in that light.

This song is pretty clearly E putting himself in his mother's shoes when she is dying, and thinking about what it must have been like for her.

Now, E being his own mom, he sees how stupid all of his concerns must have been to him. She clearly doesn't care about the money, and she's not going to listen to him when he tells her that she can't die.

Don't close your eyes as they turn into dust is in reference to the story of when sodom and gomorrah are being destroyed. Saul's wife is allowed to leave the city, but is told that she can't look back or she'll be turned into dust. She'll be turned into dust because she has sinned as much as the people in the city, and it would be hypocritical for her to look back. I"m going to go out on a limb here and say that his mother was religious (in fact I'm fairly certain he was raised catholic, as evidenced by other songs)... so it would be apt for him to make a religious comment about hypocrisy if he has placed himself directly into his mother's mindset. So essentially that comment is saying "If you really want all this money, you're a greedy sinful hypocrite and you'll turn to dust for it."

Now lets get to the fun part of the song, the double meanings.

First, lets lay them all out. In the song E sings "E feels good" The song is called "efil's God" or "Evil's God." this gives us a lot of little derivations. when we mix the two. "E feels good." "Evil's good." "E feels God" and "evil's God"

The first is saying "I feel good to be in this place and all of these drugs. On a deeper level it is saying "I feel good about dying right now. I think this is the right thing for me to do. Stop telling me that I can't die because I feel good."

Then next meaning is saying "All of the evil of my cancer not going into remission is really a good thing because at least now I can finally die and not be involved in all of this suffering anymore."

The next meaning is saying "I feel God. I am nearly dead. Why would I want to stay on your earth and worry about your material worries when I am so close to God that I can nearly feel him?"

and the final meaning, the title meaning, is E's take on things when he is no longer able to roleplay as his mother anymore and it is him saying "I can't believe this is happening to you. None of this makes sense at all, clearly the only God of this world is evil because only a terrible evil could take you away from me." This meaning gets the title because it is from E's POV and not from his roleplay POV, and therefore it is the one that is on the outside looking in.

Then finally, there is "Dog's life" which is "Efil's God" backwards. It is true that samples from "A Dog's life" are played backward through this song, but really what this is saying is that his mother has been forced to live a Dog's life and it isn't fair what is happening to her.

Unlike the happy "A Dog's Life" where E imagines how nice it would be to be a dog, this has an antithetical meaning. Thats why it is backwards. Its really the antithesis of that song.

In the live version from the Electro-Shock Blues Show, it's pretty clear that he's saying "It feels good." Which is much simpler and much more brutal, if you take the E's-mom's-POV interpretation.

I believe it's meant to be E contemplating suicide. If you look at the whole album, he gets lower and lower down to this song, where he hits rock bottom. After which he slowly starts to recover.

he's saying "e feels good" but it sounds like "efil" working with carpet's explanation of the title

sounds to me like it's from the pov of someone dying in a hospital bed. i'm gonna take a wild guess and say cancer. what with the "count is down and the drip is up..."

"you can have all the money..." maybe life insurance.

"don't tell me that i can't do this..." like someone's saying "You can't die." and the person's saying "like hell i can't. i'm hurting here."

Um, I meant to say Lott's wife. My bad.

Efil is life backwards, therefore wouldn't saying that Efil's good mean that the opposite of life is good, hence death is good? That seems like the most solid indication to me.

As I've learned just recently, E Fil's God is 'Dog's Life' backwards which is an old Eels/E track and is played backward and provides the backing track to E Fil's God.

The song is about the agonizing death of his mother due to cancer ('the count is down and the drip is up') and it does take her POV..

The most poignant and heart-wrenching aspect of this song is that E's mom is in the acceptance phase of plight. The anger, denial, bargaining, depression stages are over...

'You can bring back my suitcase but you can't bring me/you can have all the money if you say that you must...'

And she challenges E to do the same - accept - when she admonishes him with the following.

'And don't close your eyes as I turn in to dust..'

THIS IS HAPPENING, E!

We all will face this.