Forget the Swan

I think it is simply about a swan. A swan in the form of a drug-induced hallucination. The swan is a metaphor for the hallucinogenic trip he's on. He is bordering more and more on insanity from his experience in his own mind, and finally the dystopic, "Forget the swan, the dreams are gone / The pain goes on, they fly at dawn" After the high has gone, the real pain of everyday life is back.

I‘ve always heard this one section like this:

“How I tried to warn my neighbor But the corn grew much too high In confusion ??? intrusion ??? But it's not too late brother, I'll still sell you a map”

To me this was kind of a stab at the sold out hippie hypocrites, who talk about being free and helping your brother, but in the end are just as if not more materialistic and selfish than their parents. Our hero says he tried to warn his neighbor but his lame excuse is the corn was growing too high (a metaphor perhaps of being too stoned). There is a line I can’t quite make out about confusion - perhaps the neighbor is confused and lost? The final line puts the cap on the materialism - our hero says to his “brother” (cuz the fake hippies will call you their brother, while they try to rip you off!) he’ll do them a “favor” and sell them a map. Gee, thanks, J.! LoL

The rest of this tune I don’t know what it’s supposed to be about. I think it’s probably just some abstract words made by a stoned 19 year old, ya know? Some of this tune sounds terribly dated and silly, but at the time they had some pretty fresh ideas, especially for coming out of a hardcore band like Deep Wound. The flanger part still rocks too! There are some better songs on this first Dinosaur record, with more mature meaningful lyrics that sound more timeless. It’s neat how you can hear these guys growing as songwriters and maturing all within one record. As we all know, they really hit their stride on the next album, and for me at least they kept up that quality through Bug and Green Mind (and by extension Sebadoh III). But this first album really shows them forming. I wonder if we’ll ever hear J’s earlist post-hardcore proto Dinosaur demos and the early “mogo” lineup?

I always based the song off the line "forget the swan, a stone swims near", as if J is the swan and a bland little stone comes along and suddenly everyone forgets the swan and its true beauty

Lou sings, the swan could be Uma???? And J was in Amherst and there was alot of corn and Uma escaped his basement So J gave up