I Could Be Dreaming

I believe this song is about courage - having the ability to do in real life what you fantasize about doing in your head. People often imagine themselves doing heroic things, or making bold statements to others, but often this does not happen due to fear, anxiety about the situation and the response it would have. It's about standing up for what you believe in. The lyrics are wrong on here - it should be: "If you had such a dream, would you get up and do the things you believe in?"

Also, instead of hunted and haunted it's "I'm feeling awkward, I'm feeling tongue tied" - things that prevent us from speaking our mind and expressing how we really feel.

The first verse itself seeks to reflect the paranoia of modern society - everyones a stranger, and the often tulmutuous circumstances surrounding the modern family.

As always, just my opinion.

It's not "I'm feeling hunted / I'm feeling haunted"

I'm pretty sure it's "I'm feeling awkward / I'm feeling tongue-tied"

It took me a bit of googling, but it's an extract from 'Rip Van Winkle' by Washington Irving. The full extract is:

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart tempter never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener by constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village, that held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of his majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade, of a long lazy summer's day, talk listlessly over village gossip, or tell endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands, from some passing traveller. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary.

I want to find a copy of this book. Sounds interesting!

you know the video of this where he's singin to the fox puppet. and when he says "do you want to do it now?" he makes the fox puppet shake its head.

well it's adorable

oh my god such a good song. okay. makes me think: crazy guy, paranoid schizophrenic maybe, decides to kill his sister's abusive husband. i got that it's his sister from the 'family's like a loaded gun' line. everything else is pretty clear.

just an idea. goooooooood song.

I LOVE this song, especially at the end when that girl is talking; freakin amazing.

can anyone tell what she's saying, i can only make out a couple of words and can't find the lyrics anywhere

you're unlikely to find Rip Van Winkle as a book on its own - it's a short story, so you'll probably either need to find the text online, or look for it in an anthology of some sort. It's an interesting choice of excerpt - definitely fits with the song, I just think it's sort of neat to see what parts they decided NOT to include (it's the better part of a paragraph, but leaves out a few lines).

the last paragraph: castlehill is a long road in ayr (which just happens to have butcher) and that's where all the school kids hang out from a secondary up there. I go to the school just down the road and there's quite a lot of rivalry and the local neds like to get together and have knife fights etc. i believe that's the school stuart went to. The kids round here can be pretty violent. I have a feeling we are (and/or were at some point in the last 15 years) the knife capital of the country. incase you were wondering. x

I got something like tooth_brush, but more like the guy is a pretty smart kid, and he's considering whether he should kill his sister's boy even though his "head is good" and "clear," he's got things to offer, and is fighting with whether it's best to stay out of it and protect himself but his sister's being beat, or to kill the guy and risk being killed in return, or put in jail, but then his sister is protected.

Maybe he's paranoid because he feels like people know what he's thinking of?