Stromata

I'm not sure what this song means, but it's awesome.

Absolutely sublime. Best piece of music I have heard in ten years.

I'm quite sure it's "And see the disappointments walking in their line", not "lime".

After looking at Wikipedia, Stromata is the title of an old Greek book by religious thinker Clement of Alexandria. He called it that because it means "patchwork", and his book was about all the random, complicated things that are involved in life and Christianity. Wikipedia says it tries to explain the world from a Christian perspective sufficiently for a learned man.

In interpreting this song, I found it helpful to add a few periods in the lyrics. Firstly, I started a new sentence with "the fates seem a bit confused by my reflection", which I found to be a really cool, self-reflecting line (what a pun!). I get that feeling a lot, that my fate doesn't make to much sense, that I don't seem reconciled with the universe. Then I read the chorus as: "I. I. You. We're not thinking. My stromata." In this way, the structure seems to reflect the meaning of directionless chaos stitched together. Then I got thinking about maybe the song's about a relationship that is patched together, and thus stromata/patchwork means a relationship that is pieced and sown together, but now it's falling apart.

There also seems to be a theme of inevitability. "Coz if we die there's still direction" means to me that we're so insignificant, time will keep moving forward once we're gone. "And see the disappointments walking in their line, but every step they take is perfectly in time" seems to say that we've got a ton of problems and they won't go away if we just ignore them.

Thinking on purpose is something I think about a lot. I like that feeling of genuineness when you say something without even thinking about it, when it just comes out of you. Coz I have this problem of thinking out my conversations in my head before saying them, and I feel so fake and ashamed of what I have to say after that. But then again, deeper than that is the pursuit of the right words...

She uses personification with "The cold linoleum is talking up my shoes, deciphering the truth of us" and it kinda shows that inanimate objects understand us more than we do. It's also kind of a juxtaposed image, since Stromata means patchwork, and linoleum tends to have patchwork designs.

"Now we go for some reaction, a little game of who's distracted more" is a really cool description of loveless sex.

I think towards the end, she definitely still has a desire to love, doesn't think she ought to, and either way needs some sort of connection to make her happier.