Seen And Not Seen Lyrics
i think it's about the fact that in being/becoming ourselves, in choosing our jobs and interests and habits and clothes, we're shaping an image as much as a personality - and that there's always a certain amount of tension or fear at the thought that we might be doing it all wrong - that we might not only be making wrong decisions about our lives but systematically creating outer selves that make us even more fundamentally unknowable or wrongly known to others.
Holy crap this is the most relevant song to me.
It's about how people tend to either act how they look or look how they act, so they change themselves to conform to something. Then it starts talking about what if someone created their appearance on some whim, and the appearance did not suit their personality. The person in the lyrics thinks that he is such a person.
He wasn't high at all. Geopharm has the right idea. But it's not as lame as yeah we all conform to each other's ideas of each other. It's something much more deep seeded, truer than that. There are thoughts spoken and others that go completely unspoken, undiscussed, unacknowledged by the greater community. Byrne just happens to bring up one of those really obscure, dismissed thoughts that some of us tend to have in a moment of clear insight
OK, this time, I have no idea. Anyone? Maybe Byrne was just really, really, really high.
i always thought this song was about how people want to look and act a certain way that celebrities do, i.e. look pretty and act cool. and also how the media just goes along with this with their coverage of the stars.
It's a story, plain and simple, if an odd one. In terms of theme, though, I agree with Sean.
It's about worrying that decisions you've made in the past, decisions that decide who you become and what kind of identity you forge, might have been wrong, and obsession with how things might have turned out if things were different.
Inability to get over the past, and paranioa that people are constantly shape shifting and judging your every move, so you have to keep up with the deception. Along the way, maybe the narrator risks losing a part of himself.
What wonders me most is that the changes Byrne refers to are changes that are in general not associated with beauty. Not that the song is about beauty but still... "A more hooked nose...wider, thinner lips...beady eyes...a larger forehead.". One can not get more "Frankenstein" than with these features besides a couple of bolts. That in mind gives a copletely different meaning to the song in my opoinion. The meaning must be sonmething like this: A lot of people aim fot things in live that not stand up to ideal of the majority of people. People that have an own opinion and not act like herd animals of do not go with the flow.
When shaping your own identity, relying too heavily on the desired characteristics of others leaves you further from your true self. Sculpting your personality on the basis of observed ideals diminishes authentic expression of character. The lyrics remind of heavy Tumblr users who blog hundreds of pictures, songs, videos, quotes, etc. everyday. They spend so much time living vicariously through other people's creations/ideas that they lose a part of themselves.
I think it is meant to be taken literally. At least that's the interpretation favored by Police singer Sting:
"A peculiar question I asked him on the road from Stafford was, "When did you become beautiful?" He had an answer: "When I was 25 I think (1976-7). You know the Talking Heads song 'Seen And Not Seen' from 'Remain In Light'? It was a bit like that. I almost imposed it on myself as a result of that feeling... that it should be." He said it sounded strange to say it out loud." (07.07.2007 MOJO interview)