I don't claim to have be inside Dave's head when he put it on paper, but this is just what i got. It seems like it's a song about regret...sort of. If you skip ahead to the part about the monkey:
"See this monkey sittin’ in his tree, decided one day to climb down and run off to the city, look at him now; tire and drunk, livin’ in the streets, as good as dead, see a monkey should know stay up your tree"
Anyone else get an Anti-Proudest Monkey vibe from that? I got very sad the first time I thought to listen to it closely b/c it almost seems like he regrets his
childhood wonder, viewing them as foolish and trite in retrospect. Or somehow like a defeat. As though written immediately after the failure of a project you put time, effort and energy into, at that stage where you think “Why did I think that would work? Why did I even bother? Why bother trying to change anything?”
Proudest Monkey I believe generally has an ‘Experience Life, you’ll be better for it’ moral. Using the same monkey=people analogy, One Eyed Fish (or Big Eyed Fish) insists that that kind of thinking is foolish. Personally, I’ll stick to Proudest Monkey.
I don't claim to have be inside Dave's head when he put it on paper, but this is just what i got. It seems like it's a song about regret...sort of. If you skip ahead to the part about the monkey: "See this monkey sittin’ in his tree, decided one day to climb down and run off to the city, look at him now; tire and drunk, livin’ in the streets, as good as dead, see a monkey should know stay up your tree" Anyone else get an Anti-Proudest Monkey vibe from that? I got very sad the first time I thought to listen to it closely b/c it almost seems like he regrets his childhood wonder, viewing them as foolish and trite in retrospect. Or somehow like a defeat. As though written immediately after the failure of a project you put time, effort and energy into, at that stage where you think “Why did I think that would work? Why did I even bother? Why bother trying to change anything?”
Proudest Monkey I believe generally has an ‘Experience Life, you’ll be better for it’ moral. Using the same monkey=people analogy, One Eyed Fish (or Big Eyed Fish) insists that that kind of thinking is foolish. Personally, I’ll stick to Proudest Monkey.