This Perfect World

no idea wat this song is about...i think the reference to "this perfect world" is that the world is perfect even with the bad things and we have to accept them...but even though the world is perfect, the people in it are not, he did something wrong but thinks admitting it and apologizing should be enough to, if not get the girl back, end the relationship on good terms...b/c he can't move on to future relationships w/out closing the old one...

...but that lyric "i still deserve to say goodby no matter what I've done" is extremely touching

This song is about a guy who kills the mother of his daughter ("last time I was here, they found her in the lake") because he was mentally ill. He's about to be executed ("they say that soon I will be gone away") and he's talking to his daughter who's understandably still upset about what happened. He can't really connect to the situation because the drugs he's on to treat the condition are numbing his emotions ("these pills won't even let me cry").

right. but i don't think he literally killed her. suicide, baby, suicide. and he's come back for the funeral to say goodbye. the "perfect world" description may be sarcastic, or just the drugs talking. reminds me a little of lucinda williams/emmylou harris's "sweet old world", which is even sadder than this.

Been trying to figure out this song. I agree I believe it's suicide. He is returning to say goodbye to his daughter because he is dying. The mother is dead and both he and his daughter blame him. The murder scenario doesn't make sense. He would be in prison. The ambiguity of it all, makes all the more powerful. The alternative view is he talking to his wife and it's the daughter who is dead, drowned under his watch.

damn atquinn you are spot on! I can't believe I didn't see that. Another clue is "I see her your face, I hear her in your voice"

In the movie "Kingpin", this song makes perfect sense because Roy Munson, (played by Woody Harrelson) goes back home to Ocelot, Iowa after 17 years of faults and failures on the Pro bowling tour, drinking, philandering, lying, cheating people out of money etc. and finds that the town isnt what he remembered and is feelling guilty of it. Roy's "Perfect World" was his hometown and in his sadness "so blue I cant begin to say" is when he dis- coveres what the town has become. It's ironic because as Roy's life went downhill for the last 17 years, so did his hometown. I think that Roy at this moment in the movie has an epiphany to start improving his life. The movie sum's up Roy's life in general. The "they found her in lake" verse i'm not too sure on, but the lyrics "you should see my scars you'd think I'm made of stone" makes sense as well because Roy's scar was his missing right hand. I have this album and this is a great tune, great album. People I think can connect to this song if it seems so that this is what their life is like.

I always heard this as one of the saddest songs possible… About a guy singing to his ex wife after their daughter has died… Drowned. After their daughter’s death he lost it and just couldn’t get it back together…took it out on his wife and ruined their relationship too. He knows he screwed up and still loves his wife, but he just can’t cope so he has to ‘go away’.

I’ve always interpreted this song as an old man about to die visiting his now grown child. I’ve always pictured the grown child as a daughter but I don’t see that in the lyrics. He let himself in through an unlocked door. He warns her of someone bad getting in, suggesting that he is such a bad person. He notices how much his daughter now looks like her mother, adding to the menace she feels. I think he murdered the daughter’s mother and dumped her in the lake. When the police find the body, he disappears. Before he disappeared, she figured out that he murdered her mother and told him he’s made of stone. He leaves the way he came in and tells the daughter to lock the door. He couldn’t be about to be executed, as someone else suggested, because he’s out alone I think the only reason he could know he’s about to die is from an illness. The chorus is the killer being sarcastic about getting away with murder and staying on the lam for several years, then getting to see his daughter one last time. It shows that he truly is made of stone, as the daughter said.