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Beetle in the Box Lyrics
Hold your tongue the unwilling and the safe
Make your mark in your own tiny way
Your own miniature firework display for one
Fear of facing the shadow on the shore
Tied in knots and hung out on the backdoor
The 'boy-done-good' thoughts of valour and the all for one
It's the beetle in the box that shakes in your hands
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
I eat your words and you mark my mistakes
We set the dictionary up to fail
The work of poets is a vapour: we exhale - it's gone
Fleeting fondness is a flicker in your frown
Spilling out in adjectives and nouns
A mess of letters once it's chewed and swallowed down all gone
It's the beetle in the box that shakes in your hands
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
How do you feel pain?
(Tremors through the floor)
How do you hear sound?
(Tapping on the walls)
I wish I could feel it all
It's the beetle in the box that shakes in your hands
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
Make your mark in your own tiny way
Your own miniature firework display for one
Tied in knots and hung out on the backdoor
The 'boy-done-good' thoughts of valour and the all for one
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
We set the dictionary up to fail
The work of poets is a vapour: we exhale - it's gone
Spilling out in adjectives and nouns
A mess of letters once it's chewed and swallowed down all gone
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
(Tremors through the floor)
How do you hear sound?
(Tapping on the walls)
I wish I could feel it all
And it's formed out of feelings that I don't understand
They're mapped in the gaps and the spaces between
The worry of bearing the ghost in the machine
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This song is a an answer to 'These Barren Years' a song on Fallow's previous album 'Boot's Met My Face' due to the line 'I eat your words and you mark my mistakes' compared to 'Pepper your paper with spelling mistakes' from 'These Barren Years'
The song seems to be a pretty clear reference to Wittgenstein's writings on consciousness and subjective experience. Without delving into the real theories too far, the basic premise is that you need to imagine that everyone's mind is like a thing they carry around in a box that no one else can see into. And everyone calls it a beetle, but no one really knows what's inside anyone else's box, they just assume that it's the same as what's in their box. So, when he mentions the beetle in the box, he's talking about subjective experience and how people can't know what other people are really feeling, and what feeling is really like to them. The ghost in the machine is what Wittgenstein called consciousness, making a comparison between the human body as a machine and consciousness as a "ghost in the machine" so to speak, something that isn't located in any one place, but is there regardless.