Eyeoneye

Why is it so hard to allow ourselves to open up and let others in? Well, the easy answer to this is that we don’t like putting ourselves out there in an easy state of vulnerability where our hearts are up for grabs. Many of us have felt heartbreak before and it is a feeling one veers to avoid. In order to ensure steady conditions of our hearts, many of us put up a defensive barrier around it, making it difficult for anything to break through. This message is one that I believe is being conveyed in Andrew Bird’s Eyeoneye. In the beginning of the song, we get a dismantlement of this unspecified person who is taking themselves apart and laying the defenses to their wall; solidifying its positions, but never getting too close to home. Once the groundwork for this person’s barrier is complete, the re-ionizing process begins. This process seems to be an ongoing development that our song’s protagonist is still coming to terms with, never eyeing the eye that is their eye. Once this person runs face first into their “sand-wall”, however, they realize how truly alone they really are and only then do they begin to comprehend that the only heart that is being broken is their own due to their own accord. Bird captures this realization perfectly in the song by having the breakdown (and it's eyeoneyeoneyeoneyeoneye) start to lose its key and structure, only to gain its composure once this person figures they could actually use some help.

That was very well said! I have to agree whole-heartedly.

Check out </strong><a rel="nowfollow" href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=25510">songfacts.com</a> for Andrew Bird's explanation of the song's meaning.

Just to add a couple of tidbits:

He was on the Colbert Report and apparently one of the things he was thinking of while writing this song was a teratoma, "a fibrous mass of teeth and hair".

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/410579/march-13-2012/andrew-bird

There's also a TED talk where he performs the "half finished" song and explains it was inspired by feedback loops, which he describes as "the sound of self-destruction"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrwaDlrXB6w

I'm surprised this has so few comments. It's a brilliant song. I want to add that we are often stubborn and find that if we inflict pain on ourselves before someone else can, at least then we are in control...we are expecting it. Much like when you have to have a splinter removed and you grab the tweezers and say, I'll do it myself! I think when it comes to emotional pain, we often find ourselves behaving melancholy as a defense mechanism. The irony in this is that if we don't break our hearts ourselves, in that long painful way of life, there is a chance, ever so slight, that they would never be broken at all.. The game of trust is forever being decided if it's worthy to be played.