Windowsill

Best song I've ever heard. Exactly how I feel about this country, and this world. I don't want to live in the world my father's generation is creating. That's what it's all about.

I don't want to live in the world they are creating everday-- by recklessly invading countries and sacrificing lives to only create a new generation of enemies whose ranks are ten times what they were five years ago. By polluting and causing global warming that I will have to live with (rising tide). By spending and piling on deficits that I will have to repay (my father's debt). By creating a culture of fear and religious fervor that will ultimately impinge on my freedom, leaving no refuge but consumer culture and withdrawal from rational public discourse. By taking away my privacy and civil liberties ("my name and address"). Ultimately by destroying the very soul of the country my ancestors have called their home for generations--America--a country I can barely stand to live in at the moment.

The consequences of their reckless actions are lapping at all of our windowsills, at the people of New Orleans discovered in August 2005.

Father = the U.S. Living in the father's house means Canada is under control of the American empire. It's a critique of both American culture and foreign policy, and the fact that we have to see it all at our windowsill.

Arcade Fire is so adept at taking abstract feelings, in this case feelings of dismay at the world you have inheirited - a melancholy dismay that feels hopeless, and turning that wrenching feeling in your guts into words and sounds that convey the feeling more than my bumbling attempt. This magic of Arcade Fire is so clear in the whole suburbs album. This is poetry put to great melody.

I think this song is dealing with how it must be to live in America right now, what with the constant state of unrest.

And I adore the way Win sings that line, "I don't wanna live in my father's house no more."

I like the line, "I don't wanna see what happens next."

It reminds me of those old internet ads that'd show you a "shocking" video clip, then stop it and say "Click to see what happens next!"

But of course, not before they try to make you sign up for something.

I like it.

I agree with CaitlinLikeWhoa. This song is about every little pressure adding up to create a constant stream of stress. The narrator is tired of television and the zeitgeist in general, with its neverending noises and sales pitches and mindless blather. The "tide" of this TV culture is rising until eventually it becomes too much to bear. What then?

benjame336: "What then..." is probobly what Intervention is about. There very similar songs, in meaning at least.

benjame336: "What then..." is probobly what Intervention is about. There very similar songs, in meaning at least.

this song seems like a counterpart to (Antichrist Television Blues), which immediately preceeds in on the album. both start out similarly. In ATB, a peppy, hyper "Don't want to work in a building downtown" and in windowsill, a slowed down, almost reticent "I don't want to hear the noises on TV". if ATB can be interpreted as from the point of view of joe simpson, then this could be seen in part as jessica's response..

"MTV what have you done to me? Save my soul, set me free Set me free, what have you done to me? I can't breathe, I can't see"

definitely seems like a reaction to intense media scrutiny.. in the broader sense though, ATB seems to describe the lazy, exploitative nature of the entertainment industry right now, while windowsill describes being fed up with it... be it from the point of view of a media darling, or any given person who's just sick of the flood of media distortion. Hence “I don’t want to see it at my windowsill” (x 21)

also, being from New Orleans, the windowsill line strikes me as an allusion to the flooding after Katrina…

“I don't want to fight in the holy war… …I don't want to live in America no more”

Seems to support this… help was slow to come to the gulf coast in large part because national guard troops from those areas were mostly deployed to the “holy war” going on right now.

Admittedly, the last part of my interpretation might be a little skewed by my own experience, but regardless, the song seems to equate the media coverage of national news, entertainment, and even war as all falling into the same saturated, overblown category that is oh so distinctly American.