Orestes

Actually, I think the name of the song actually does say it all. In Greek mythology, Orestes mother killed his father...but that's only the beginning of the story, which parallels the entire song.

the first line says as much: "Metaphor for a missing moment, pull me into your perfect circle"...

Anyway, Orestes was bound to avenge his father's death, and to do so, he had to kill his mother. And that's the kicker, and the perfect circle, because the Furies (Greek minor goddesses) were involved. Had he not avenged his father's death, they would judge him guilty...but for killing his mother, they also judged him guilty, and as a punishment, they drove him insane. There was no real out for him...he had to kill his mother, but the fact that he was of her flesh damned him.

I think the song is about that...relationships that seem to be circular: when things are going wrong, and you feel the need to lash out, to hurt the other person...when you hate them enough to want to chip and peel and scrape away the ties binding them to you, your love for them, so that you can strike at them, kill them the way they're destroying you. It's about those times when we don't want to love someone, we're trying to stop, so that we can destroy the "us" that is causing the pain.

This song runs right along with the Maynards lyrics in H. Your close to someone, and you can't seem to let go of them, but keeping them close is killing you. the umbilical cord is a metaphor, not necissarily symbolizing the mother, but rather the nurturing connection between you and a loved one, and as with birth, after seperation this must be severed if life is to progress.

Its pretty obvious. The main dillema Orestes has in the myth is wether it okay for someone to kill his mother to avenge his father. Hence "Snip away this umbilical residue/Keeping me from killing you."

(to me) this is about going insane. when you first start to realize your perceptions are unlike others, and you are completely different from the "norm" of the civilization your living in, you start cutting your ties (aka life line). then because the trend for "shrinks" to prescribe strong perception altering medications, when you go to get help your only getting drugs. this only gives you small amounts of time of peaceful ( altered perceptions) moments. by the end you have cut all your social ties and become socially dead ( cutting the cord to keep you from dragging people with you ). so this becomes and obsession while you have enough to realize that your not really crazy or insane, its just your perceptions are different. in America and other "westernized" civilizations if you do not look act perform even think like the other members of your civilization, you are deemed (by people with out the proper schooling to make these judgments of value) as mentally ill, or crazy. then it is a downward spiral of social segregation. they perceive the victim as a monster, and so to the other this person is capable of anything. in short the mythos of the victim shadows the fact.

(personal) i have a avg 150ish ( depending on the test ) I.Q. i have fun calculating moles and time differentials (T=To/(sqrt 1- (v^2/c^2)) i don't watch tv i read books and journals from the web. when i got out of high school i was forced by my family to go to the "funny farm." for saying things like time is not an non-spatial continuum (exc. min sec days) time is an location. my family thought i was insane when i was just talking about physics. only problem when i tried to explain it to them they could not understand, so it was me i was crazy to them. for years i was striped of my rights by the courts and heavily medicated. never once was i violent, but because they perceived me as a threat i was. finally i was released and allowed to continue my life. but damage done. now i go to college so i can get my phd in physics and nuc. chem.. but i don't socialize because no one understands what im talking about except for my Dr. in my field of study. now i see it all starting again. they are now forcing me to take a lot of psyc. these teachers are giving me the same test that was given to me before i was striped of my rights. so i cut all my ties with friends and love ones simply to not drag them though this process. some times people project on to you what they fear the most. that is how i got this meaning from this song. because this process is social murder, and being the victim of it makes you very angry, but you cant show it or they use it to label you, and the only peace you will find is when they medicate you and lock you up,

"...keeping me from killing you, and dragging you down with me, i can almost hear you scream..." "... give me one more medicated peaceful moment..."

and all psychiatry is... is philosophy with pills.. maybe one day they will get there heads out of there collective (beeps). but until then head thumpers for the most part just project there own problems on to the victim.

hate on this if you want i don't care because at the end of the day its all about how you relate to it and feel about it that dictates weather or not you like or dislike it. that is if you think for your self. but alas most people don't...... []11[]

To me this song is about the special bond between a mother and her son. The umbillical residue is a metaphor for the connection between the two. In order for him to be free and for her to be in peace he must cut and sewer this bond. Both people are in pain but only the narrator can do something about it and this song is about his struggle.

It is a very powerful and emotional song and when the lyrics are read along with the song it makes for an emotional cocktail. I know how Maynard feels since I had to cut that bond and let my mother go peacefully last winter

Orestes is the son of Agamemnon in Greek Mythology... i'm currently looking for the pertinence to the song, if anyone else has it i'd love to see it... here's what i found on orestes:

"in Greek mythology, son of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae (or Argos), and his wife, Clytemnestra. According to Homer, Orestes was away when his father returned from Troy to meet his death at the hands of Aegisthus, his wife's lover. On reaching manhood, Orestes avenged his father by killing Aegisthus and Clytemnestra."

• Brittanica.com

ohh i see, thanks therymz, i know some about greek mythology, but i didnt know much about Orestes..

Amazing song..That's self explanitory.

Swann, I read your explanation to the song and you must sure put a lot of thought into this song. Your explanation is so complicated and seems so intelligent. I'm still trying to fathom everything you just said. But anyway I congratulate you on finding a new meaning behind one of the best songs ever created. It deals a lot with self-discovery and the feeling of a present eternity. That's what I get from your post though I know you mean a whole lot more.

Does anyone know anything about Judith Keenen's cerebral aneurysm? I know that it killed her and that it was a long and painful way to go. The reason I ask is this:

I got the impression reading these lyrics that she might have been on a feeding tube or something similar her last days. Perhaps Maynard needed to give the go ahead to have it pulled, and end her suffering. If this is the case, I think he's relating the feeding tube to the umbilical cord that brought him life, and the connection to his mother. He had to snip them both away, one literally and one metaphorically ("to release us all") This would be consistent with the mythology of Orestes who was driven into madness, after killing his mother. Maybe, "keeping me from killing you," was a more literal statement.

This is probably my favorite song on this record, just FYI. :)