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A Gun In The First Act Lyrics
I saw you standing with a broken cigarette out in the rain.
I guess all our lives are a little less than they seem.
Now you're praying to the memory of a god you use to love
(A reminder of his death hanging low around your neck.)
Do you find sleep comes easy
Dancing with the empty silhouette of everything?
Our waking lives are just the dreams of our dreams.
Standing in the city asking what it's all for but
There's nothing in this world that giving meaning makes it more:
The louder the ring, the less the thing.
When we see black clouds coming over our heads, over our heads, then we know where
it's ending;
A loaded gun hanging over our heads...We already know the way it ends.
Screaming from a stage or at a pay-phone in the rain
Trying to find the words I always think I need to say.
Please, bring it back to the moment before you left
I never felt the sting.
The louder the ring, the less the thing.
Break, break, break it down
Back to the way that it was before
When symbols weren't just loaded guns
and black clouds weren't just metaphors
Bring, bring, bring it back
Back to the way that it was before:
Empty all the loaded guns and bury all the metaphors.
Now we're going around in a place that makes no sound, where names never fit and
nothing ever means a thing.
I guess all our lives are a little less than they seem.
Now you're praying to the memory of a god you use to love
(A reminder of his death hanging low around your neck.)
Do you find sleep comes easy
Dancing with the empty silhouette of everything?
Our waking lives are just the dreams of our dreams.
Standing in the city asking what it's all for but
There's nothing in this world that giving meaning makes it more:
The louder the ring, the less the thing.
it's ending;
A loaded gun hanging over our heads...We already know the way it ends.
Trying to find the words I always think I need to say.
Please, bring it back to the moment before you left
I never felt the sting.
The louder the ring, the less the thing.
Break, break, break it down
Back to the way that it was before
When symbols weren't just loaded guns
and black clouds weren't just metaphors
Bring, bring, bring it back
Back to the way that it was before:
Empty all the loaded guns and bury all the metaphors.
Now we're going around in a place that makes no sound, where names never fit and
nothing ever means a thing.
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I think this song is about war. There are lines referring to losing faith, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, etc., and it sounds like it's from the perspective of a person who knows someone that went overseas and came back completely messed up.
There are so many questions and things we want to understand. there's so much we want to say someone who dealt with war but we will NEVER know what they went through. So I think this song is just like, I wish you never would've went off to war because you're not the same and there's nothing I can do about it...just the worst helpless feeling ever.
I think it's also a reference to Chekhov's gun. It's a literary technique that involves presenting something seemingly irrelevant in the first act that is later revealed to be important. The basic idea is to not place any material into a plot that is meaningless. Everything has to be symbolized. Everything has to be significant; hence, don't place a loaded gun in the first act if you're not going to fire it.
I think it definitely has to do with symbolism and how sometimes the symbols themselves become too much of the focus rather than the actual intentions. All religions revolve around faith but use different symbols to represent that faith.
I think Geoff is suggesting that symbols and metaphors can be powerful tools for conceptualizing and understanding the world. Without them we'd be walking around in a silent place with no names for anything, but at the same time when symbols rule our lives they lose their inherent meaning. The louder the ring, the more showy it is, the less it actually represents.
Powerful. Not sure what it means, but its deep. Very deep.
i just found this interview...
"Another theme explored on the album is the importance of symbolism in human interaction and the ways in which symbols -- particularly those promoting religions and other belief systems -- have been used to divide people. This concept is most thoroughly explored on the song 'The Gun in the First Act.'
'Sometimes, when you're broadcasting the meaning behind a symbol, you're downplaying the reality of what's really going on,' Rickly said. 'People get divided over these doctrines that may not have any real basis.'"
"The louder the ring, the less the thing" Hiding a lack of love/faithfulness behind an extravegant ring (marriage)
"When we see black clouds coming over our heads, over our heads, then we know where it's ending" Makes me think of the way certain fundamentalists are predicting the rapture/etc., but avoiding day-to-day issues.
"A loaded gun hanging over our heads...We already know the way it ends." More generally, if it is all ordained, then action is pointless, and people can justify their in-action or lack of responsability
Chekhov
"And “A Gun In The First Act” is obviously a Chekhov reference. I was also reading Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker. I really love how it talks about symbols, how they have the tendency to break down the true value of what they represent. Everything becomes a symbol for something else. A leaf falling from a tree means mortality instead of it just being this beautiful leaf." - Geoff