The Modern Leper

I really don't think this is about drugs. At all. Not of any kind, including alcohol. This is all about his mental state, how he is.

First off, it's modern leper. Not a leper of old, where you risk losing body parts. In our society today, most of our focus is on emotional and mental wellbeing. So a modern leper is someone who's losing himself in that way, not physically.

To me, he blends in, you wouldn't know him by sight. He's losing himself, parts of who he is, and he doesn't care because he's so far gone.

The part that sells this to me is well I've crippled your heart a hundred times and still can't work out why, see I've got this disease that I can't shake and I'm just rattling through life.

Anyone who's dealt with depression, especially depersonalization, knows that it's not something that you can just brush off, and it leaves you drifting in everything you do. If you've ever dealt with someone like that, you know how crushing it can be, trying to help, and not able to do anything because they can't shake it. When you're in that kind of state, depressed, not sure of yourself, unable to feel anything, one of the few things that can break through is a kind of odd desperation. You're surrounded by these people that are doing everything they can think of to help you, and you know it's hurting them when it doesn't work, but they keep trying. Sometimes you have to wonder if they are some kind of masochist to keep trying. You can't help but hurt them, so for them to keep trying is sometimes only explained by them being a masochist of somekind.

Not necessarily healthy, but that's kind of what it's about.

The more he loses the things keeping him going, the less it makes sense, the harder it is for him to keep going. And I think at the end, he's kind of starting to come around.

If I don't make any sense, it's because I've been having a bad night.

Wow...it's been so long since a song has hit me so hard on the first listen. This song is surely about mental illness, specifically depression. The modern leprosy, because people so often don't know how to deal with it so they just isolate the people who have it. Depression makes you numb, you don't care what happens to you. You push away the people who care the most about you, and you hurt them, but you're also weirdly distanced from what you're doing because of your illness. At the same time, the person who keeps trying with you has sometimes got their own issues too. In this song he just wants to start again every time, but he'll keep on hurting her.

I can't really describe how beautiful I think this song is and how much I can identify with it.

He is addressing us, the listener, directly;

"A cripple walks amongst you"

By 'you', he is talking to us, the fans. Calling us out. For somehow loving this depressing, morbid indie rock character.

To us, it's all just entertainment. But for him, this is no character act. It's real, genuine human suffering. So, his observation is legitimate; "You must be a masochist to love a modern leper".

By 'modern', he is refering to the depressing, indie asthetic/character which is quite fashionable these days.

This is a very sad song. To me it seems to be about a guy who hates himself and is quite self-destructive, and so cant understand why a girl loves him. Yet there's hope: She's "not ill" (mentally ill) so there must be something in him worth loving, and he's "not dead", i.e. he hasnt killed himself. So they start again and try and make their relationship's normal/stable ("you can tell me all about what you did today").

This is so fucking good

Yep, what you said... Fantastic song, great album.

gparkla what I think you miss is the transition from the leper imagery to himself as singer / songwriter / performer. But before I get ahead of myself, I agree totally with what you are saying. Just not in the same terms. My point: "you must love a masochist" is in reference to all of us (including the writer / singer / performer AND LISTENER). For example, "Well I'm lying on the ground now Walking through the only door Well I have lost my eye sight Like I said I would But I still know And that is you in front of me" ends with "Doesn't that make us the perfect pair Just you and me We'll start again And you can tell me all about what you did today What you did today."

This song doesn't have to be about drugs. To me this song is about a boy who knows that this girl is perfect for her but he is too fucked up emotionally to love her the way that she loves him. This is his leprecy. Maybe he does do drugs, maybe he just always hurts her because he is trying so hard to love her back but it doesn't equal what she deserves. Maybe I'm biased, but that's what I hear when I listen to this song.

I agree that this song doesn't necessarily have to be about a drug addict/alcoholic/depressive/all of the above, although it does seem a likely option with the type of personality he's describing. The thing is, whatever he might or might not be addicted to, to me this song is about the fact that he isn't the only addict--they are addicted to each other and the sick cycle that they have together. I love the way the lyrics nail his confusion and contempt for her willingness to swallow his failures over and over again. He needs her to absolve him so he doesn't go completely off the deep end, but the fact that he knows she stays for bad reasons gives him someone to blame other than himself, and gives him a reason to try to cut her free, which the part of him that loves her wants to do even though he knows he needs her. He's angry at himself for screwing up all the time, but feels that he has no alternatives. And even though he is in some ways better off with her because she's the only one who truly cares for him, she does him equal damage because the ways that he hurts her are apparent but inexplicable to him. He hates himself for not being able to figure out a way to stop hurting her, and he half hates her for staying and making him watch what he's doing to her. He doesn't fully understand that she's as addicted as him, because all he can see are his own problems.

I don't see any hope at all in the last lines, because he's already said unequivocably that he won't change, so basically he's just begging her to ignore his behavior for one more day, ignore him trying to push her away one more time, because that's what most people in such unhealthy situations do--enable each other to maintain the status quo, no matter how broken it may be.

A great song, beautifully written. I listen to it sometimes to remind myself of a few things it can be easy to forget if this song makes a lot of sense to you because you've lived it.

i think that this song is just about being in love with someone that isnt good for you for whatever reason. we're all guilty of this. for example me and my on/off boyfriend go round in this cycle when you forget the other person's faults and fall for them time and time again and end up getting hurt -hence the 'masochist' theme.

build you up then drag you down this song helps me a lot.