In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the wall
We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today,
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street,
But all he ever thinks to do is watch,
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch
Many miles away something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch
Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Grandmother screaming at the wall
We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today,
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street,
But all he ever thinks to do is watch,
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch
Many miles away something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch
Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Lyrics submitted by Demau Senae
Synchronicity II Lyrics as written by Gordon Sumner
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I don't think the song quite dots the "i" and crosses the "t" of saying that the father WILL do something violent at this point. He is frustrated by his life, and is returning home with a rising discontent, but there are a lot more men like that than there are homicidal maniacs.
The monster has also crawled out of Loch Ness and arrived at the door of a cottage there. I don't know of any accounts of the legendary monster of Loch Ness that makes it small enough that it could actually fit inside a cottage door -- I can't visualize it walking through a door and going on a rampage inside a house.
The song suggests that something bad might happen at both locations, but it's just creating the tension, not reporting a grisly outcome.
The "door size" argument doesn't work, but the rest of what you say is well thought out. You might rely more upon the fact that it crawled out of the lake, as Plesiosaurs never, but never would do that, nor be able to. Their aquatic lifestyle and giant flippers where in perfect harmony with their giant mass, and they weren't ever going to crawl out of anything. So you could sinch it right there.<br /> <br /> But more to the positive parts. You get it. The connection is there without forcing any kind of grisly scenario on the family. The connectivity is what is really grisly, and creepy. At first I was like everyone and tried to force a connection so as to say a man with a deeply repressed and deformed psychical aspect was going to finally explode, but then I gradually just couldn't buy this interpretation. It turns out that he's just the human hypocrisy which is acausally tied up with some monster's brutal honesty on the other side of the planet, perhaps even in a parallel universe. I keep wanting to tell folks "It's the ACAUSAL connecting principle...". It is supposed to be related without being some kind of forced analogy down to a T. Like tests used to see what is up in someone's mind, this works pretty good on that angle too. But in the end, people watch way too many horror movies.
loderunner is right. talking about doorsize and the ability of the monster to walk is just nit-picking and avoiding the obvious