In View

Misguided affection? Obsession? A past relationship?

I don't know, but hot damn if that isn't some catchy stuff.

My initial fav on the new disc. Very catchy and upbeat. A great tune!

Well when I hear this song it just relates to me and my friend.. I love her to death, and I haven't talked to her in awhile and I'm always "meaning to call her" but I pussy out before hand and end up just holding it off.. (by the way excuse my language)

this song explains about a relationship gone distant..yet the love and the spark is still very much there..so much that they are in everything they do. things can be lost of change, but never in their eyes..its almost nostalgic.

i agree. so nostalgic yet so upbeat and sunny. might be highschool sweethearts, first loves that will always carry that love with them no matter if there's an answer on the other line. its mutual and comfortable and their both at peace with what is and what used to be. i love it.

I remember reading somewhere that it's actually about the first telephones. It seems like more of an over-encompassing idea than a be-all, as it obviously goes deeper than that.

this is song is about after a really great first date you really dont know how long you should wait before you call that person deffiantly one of the best hip songs tho

I dunno but I love to think about songs in movies and I would love to hear this song in a beginning of one, with the title.

If it's in one and I don't know, please tell me!

This song is about god.

While watching the special on The Hour, with the Hip playing songs from their World Container album, Gord Downie said something very peculiar. "Here's one with absolutely no metaphor. It's all metaphor."

I am not a religious person; atheist, in fact, but the first thing that popped into my head was that the metaphor is for god.

And now, every time I listen to this song, that's all I can think of. That Gord Downie wrote this as a message to his god, or to a higher power, or anything else of that caliber.

I love you, you know I do. (Yes, this can be about literally everything. But "you know I do" hints toward someone, or something which knows.) Yea, it's perfect. Well, it isn't and it is. (Speaks for itself; nothing is perfect, not even belief in religion.)

I've been meaning to call you. I've been meaning to call you. Then I do. (He's been meaning to keep in touch spiritually, to "call", to pray. But, for some reason or another, he cannot bring himself to do that. That, I believe is the encompassing metaphor. A phonecall to god.)

Phone rings once. Phone rings twice. Phone rings three times. (And this is where it gets a bit iffy. The phonecall is there, but why isn't anyone picking up? Is god not answering his prayers?)

I am of you. (Could be a reference to how man was supposedly created in the image of god himself.) You are in everything I do. (This would be a shocker. Do all Hip songs have religious undertones? Or is Downie just using good old fashioned hyperbole here?)

I trust you. That makes you true. (Pretty self explanatory. He trusts god, so god is true in his mind.) I don't care if it isn't the way it is. (He is willing to disregard evidence which points to there being no "god", at least in the traditional sense.)

I am of you. You are always in view. (God is "in view" to him; that is, he always "sees" god, or maybe the thing he is morally supposed to do.) Yea, I am my will. But you are in everything I do. (Contrasts with "I am of you", by saying he has been given free will. He wills himself to be the person he is, but his actions are dominated by his belief in god.)

In the Day Eraser's dark of night, In the Excited States, gone in plain sight, Under the wave or by cavelight, I lose, things change, but never in your eyes. (This is the most confusing lyric. If you boil it down to the basics, the sentence goes: "In the dark of night, in the Excited States, under the wave or by cavelight, I lose, but never in your eyes." WTF does that mean? This lyric may compromise the unity of the theory, but my guess is that it means that no matter where he searches for evidence for/against god, he cannot find it, but in god's eyes, that is what's supposed to happen?)

And that's my theory. It works for the first three quarters of the song, but the last quarter is so cryptic that I can't find out what it means. If anybody could provide an interpretation of that last stanza, that would be great.

One of the Hip's best, buried on a forgettable album. But so goes the Hip - their last album to connect from start to finish was IVL.