I love this song too. I've always assumed the black eye is a metaphor for enduring the pains of life. When he was a young man, he took pride in his black eye (and studied his reflection in the mirror), presumably acquired in a macho-teenage brawl. But when he got older, life gave him a more permanent black ring around the eyes (maybe disease related to coal-mining, which half of Uncle Tupelo's songs seem to relate to? or just alcholism/depression/hard labor?). "When he realized/That this one was here to stay/He took down/All the mirrors in the hallway/And thought only of his younger face." I guess to me this is a sad commentary on how the painful initiations of youth, that once were a point of pride, come to mean something all together different when adversity piles up and becomes monotonous and hopeless in the setting so familiar to Tweedy and Farrar, a midwestern community burdened down by hard labor and poverty.
I love this song too. I've always assumed the black eye is a metaphor for enduring the pains of life. When he was a young man, he took pride in his black eye (and studied his reflection in the mirror), presumably acquired in a macho-teenage brawl. But when he got older, life gave him a more permanent black ring around the eyes (maybe disease related to coal-mining, which half of Uncle Tupelo's songs seem to relate to? or just alcholism/depression/hard labor?). "When he realized/That this one was here to stay/He took down/All the mirrors in the hallway/And thought only of his younger face." I guess to me this is a sad commentary on how the painful initiations of youth, that once were a point of pride, come to mean something all together different when adversity piles up and becomes monotonous and hopeless in the setting so familiar to Tweedy and Farrar, a midwestern community burdened down by hard labor and poverty.