Dayzed Inn Daydreams

I'm surprised this has no comments. To me it's a song about the sacrifices one makes as an artist, and the possibility of success eluding the artist within his or her lifetime.

Ariel, at a time when he was "too young to fall," i.e. before life grinds a person down, "heard the call" of the artist. This line reminds me of Steely Dan's "Caves of Altamira," wherein Donald Fagan describes the prehistoric men "before the fall, when they wrote it on the wall, when there wasn't even any Hollywood. They heard the call, and they wrote it on the wall- for you and me, we understood." The cavemen were also called, and they left their cave paintings, which still resonate with modern people, as art is universal.

Like Fagan's prehistoric man, Ariel, in this song, dies without achieving the recognition that he may or may not desire, but survives "in a thousand future lives" who appreciate his art. Unfortunately, distilling the essence of his very being into song has left him tortured, and he dies prematurely. One can see that this is somewhat common among artists who really live and breathe their art, like Kurt Cobain, who is referenced in the song's lengthy bridge section.

With the "I'm Broadway Kurt Cobain," Ariel is expressing his fear that his art will be sold as a commodity after his death, and perverted into something that is the antithesis of its intention. It's humorous to imagine a singing, dancing, Broadway Cobain, but the truth is that Cobain's legacy has already been perverted and sold for lecherous documentaries, cash-grab box sets, and cheap, sweatshop T shirts available at places like Walmart. For Ariel, Cobain seems to be exemplary of what this song describes, an artist drawn to create something of meaning because of a higher calling, putting his soul into that something until it wears him away both physically and mentally, but then his work is given meaning after his death, but it is a twisted and perverse meaning.

Anyway this song slaps IMO