In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Reaching out now and I touch your face
Please believe I'm only traveling
Like seeking wonder from a foreign place
It matters not from where I'm coming
And the snow so light is bleeding
We sleep so tight when we're breathing
Calm a little pint of soul - creeping
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (call is waiting, contemplate a thread already spun)
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (should you carry what you are is cooked until it's done)
Left to locate the last trace of waste
I picked it up and it was smiling
Just like the dancer who has lost her leg
She laughs alone but then she's crying
And the snow so light is bleeding
We sleep so tight when we're breathing
Calm a little pint of soul - creeping
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (call is waiting, contemplate a thread already spun)
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (should you carry what you are is cooked until it's done)
Please believe I'm only traveling
Like seeking wonder from a foreign place
It matters not from where I'm coming
And the snow so light is bleeding
We sleep so tight when we're breathing
Calm a little pint of soul - creeping
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (call is waiting, contemplate a thread already spun)
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (should you carry what you are is cooked until it's done)
Left to locate the last trace of waste
I picked it up and it was smiling
Just like the dancer who has lost her leg
She laughs alone but then she's crying
And the snow so light is bleeding
We sleep so tight when we're breathing
Calm a little pint of soul - creeping
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (call is waiting, contemplate a thread already spun)
Calm the light, let me fly, back to Basom (should you carry what you are is cooked until it's done)
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"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Mental Istid
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
No Surprises
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Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
My interpretation of this song is personal and philosophical, and most likely not what Gener had in mind writing it, but here goes:
The Buddhist idea of enlightenment is about severing one's attachment to the material world of senses and objects. I hear this song as a response to that, celebrating the fact that it is precisely those attachments that bring meaning and pleasure to life. While the eventual goal is the end of suffering, along the way, suffering is inextricably linked to all our experiences.
How is that in the song? Check it out:
We're talking about an idea that originated in South Asia - "Like seeking wonder from a foreign place".
...but it's accessible to any sentient being - "It matters not from where I'm coming".
The destination, enlightenment, is in some sense inevitable - "A thread already spun".
However, the journey of being reborn over and over again - "Please believe I'm only traveling"
...and learning lessons along the way, has to actually happen - "What you are is cooked until it's done".
Our goal is to find and eliminate our worldly attachments - "Left to locate the last trace of waste".
But, that attachment also brings meaning and pleasure - "Picked it up and it was smiling".
There's an acknowledgment that the pleasure is always coupled with pain - "Like a dancer who has lost her legs / She laughs alone but then she's crying".
The line "We sleep to tight when we're breathing" has a double-meaning. The reference to breathing addresses the practice of meditation and focusing on one's breath, as the dynamic interface between self and not-self. Also, breathing implies living in this world, which implies suffering, but nevertheless we love it in an innocent, child-like way: we "sleep so tight".
The chorus sounds like the vow of a Bodhisattva: To remain in this world - "let me fly back to Basom" - postponing enlightenment and freedom - "calm the light", don't yet pass into the light - in order to help all sentient beings reach the goal.
Basom itself, though it may be a town in New York, sounds like a earthy, worldly place, made of "base" elements. It's not a place of enlightenment, but rather the "base" from which we travel.
Like I said, this is just my own interpretation, and what the song means to me. The brothers Ween are amazing musicians and writers, and their songs must speak to many people in a million different ways.
Hail Boognish, yo.
I always saw this song as a tie to the inevitability of "finding enlightenment" when playing with psychedelics. <br /> <br /> This and "Exactly Where I'm At" both give me the feel of somebody going through some pretty heavy self-realizations due to acid, psilocybin or whatever psychedelic is used (matters not from where I'm coming - I see this, too, as not just in regards to which drug, but what method [spiritual, playful, what have you]).<br /> <br /> The thing I took from the sleep so tight line, though, was that we sleep so tight - lose awareness gained through the experience - when we're breathing - "living in this world".<br /> <br /> To me it's as though he's wanting to go back to that perfect experience where he saw that truth for what it was.<br /> <br /> Just my two cents. Ain't worth two pennies, I know, but I'll take what I can.