I think this is the only song that he has that has a problem presented and no solution; every other song gives some sort of hope, but this one just asks questions and gives excuses.
anyway, the song goes through a young man's life, chronicling how his father has never truly paid attention to him. "Its the kind of love that comes and goes when there's company coming around." The father never approved of his son's life, his friends or his reactions to people making fun of him, but he could never retaliate "but i never got a chance to draw my knife"
the boy tries so hard to gain his father's approval, doing everything "perfectly," but his father never pays attention. The father and the son apparently fight a lot. "its all quite for the first time" after the boy decides to jump off of bridge and kill himself. mel, the white sheet is the sheet that they cover the corpse with. the narrator thinks that it never had to be this way, but one can just imagine him shaking his head when he says "what's the son of man and a boy to do" (the son of man meaning Jesus).
i do have some questions myself:
i don't understand the first and fourth verses, they utterly confuse me
what is a "halfway rush of blood" and who is Missy?
what is the "holy kiss"?
what is "not like those days, its not like i'm scared of you"?
Your explanation really helped me understand this song a lot better. :]
I can't tell you what a halfway rush of blood or who Missy is, because I can't figure it out either :\
But I think a holy kiss would be the kiss at a wedding.
And "Not like those days, it's not like I'm scared of you" - It could be he's not afraid of his father anymore? Or you could be death? It's not like when he was younger, he's not scared of death anymore? I think it's probably the death one..
Hope this kind of sort of helps you? :D...
Your explanation really helped me understand this song a lot better. :]
I can't tell you what a halfway rush of blood or who Missy is, because I can't figure it out either :\
But I think a holy kiss would be the kiss at a wedding.
And "Not like those days, it's not like I'm scared of you" - It could be he's not afraid of his father anymore? Or you could be death? It's not like when he was younger, he's not scared of death anymore? I think it's probably the death one..
Hope this kind of sort of helps you? :D
@labgurl123 This is late, but I think I just figured out a couple of things about the song from a lot of these comments. I think because of the religious overtones, a lot of people are getting lost in semantics.
@labgurl123 This is late, but I think I just figured out a couple of things about the song from a lot of these comments. I think because of the religious overtones, a lot of people are getting lost in semantics.
The song talks about the difficulty of growing up without a role model. Before the boy offs himself at the end, it looks like the last trouble he had was with some friends at home playing spin the bottle, being locked in with a girl in a closet (‘missy’, being a generic name for some unknown miss), getting half...
The song talks about the difficulty of growing up without a role model. Before the boy offs himself at the end, it looks like the last trouble he had was with some friends at home playing spin the bottle, being locked in with a girl in a closet (‘missy’, being a generic name for some unknown miss), getting half hard or half soft (slipping down the bottom of a halfway rush of blood) in a way that wasn’t appropriate and fumbling to leave out of embarrassment (looking for a light switch when the lights were off). We know it was something pretty bad if it became the last part of his story and it makes sense for it to be a sexual mistake for a story about not having fatherly guidance.
And I think the lines at the end (what’s the son of man and a boy to do?) are a tongue in cheek way to extend the metaphor into a partly hopeful context of religious parallel…
Saying that a story of a boy without a father is a lot like the story of Jesus. With lots of suffering and eventually death, for something that was really set off by the father figure (or absence of one). To me, it reads as “what’s a boy to do / what’s the son of man to do (without the father)?” With maybe the goal of contextualizing a person’s hardships more around their upbringing. There’s some further meaning, I think, in the last lines about how maybe accepting some kind of religious father figure / ‘man in his heart’ could be a replacement for a physical father figure. However, in this story, it seems that both Jesus and the boy are sitting there disappointed as neither physical nor spiritual father intervened in what could have been the boy’s salvation (holy kiss).
I think this is the only song that he has that has a problem presented and no solution; every other song gives some sort of hope, but this one just asks questions and gives excuses.
anyway, the song goes through a young man's life, chronicling how his father has never truly paid attention to him. "Its the kind of love that comes and goes when there's company coming around." The father never approved of his son's life, his friends or his reactions to people making fun of him, but he could never retaliate "but i never got a chance to draw my knife"
the boy tries so hard to gain his father's approval, doing everything "perfectly," but his father never pays attention. The father and the son apparently fight a lot. "its all quite for the first time" after the boy decides to jump off of bridge and kill himself. mel, the white sheet is the sheet that they cover the corpse with. the narrator thinks that it never had to be this way, but one can just imagine him shaking his head when he says "what's the son of man and a boy to do" (the son of man meaning Jesus).
i do have some questions myself: i don't understand the first and fourth verses, they utterly confuse me what is a "halfway rush of blood" and who is Missy? what is the "holy kiss"? what is "not like those days, its not like i'm scared of you"?
thank you
Your explanation really helped me understand this song a lot better. :] I can't tell you what a halfway rush of blood or who Missy is, because I can't figure it out either :\ But I think a holy kiss would be the kiss at a wedding. And "Not like those days, it's not like I'm scared of you" - It could be he's not afraid of his father anymore? Or you could be death? It's not like when he was younger, he's not scared of death anymore? I think it's probably the death one.. Hope this kind of sort of helps you? :D...
Your explanation really helped me understand this song a lot better. :] I can't tell you what a halfway rush of blood or who Missy is, because I can't figure it out either :\ But I think a holy kiss would be the kiss at a wedding. And "Not like those days, it's not like I'm scared of you" - It could be he's not afraid of his father anymore? Or you could be death? It's not like when he was younger, he's not scared of death anymore? I think it's probably the death one.. Hope this kind of sort of helps you? :D
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@labgurl123 This is late, but I think I just figured out a couple of things about the song from a lot of these comments. I think because of the religious overtones, a lot of people are getting lost in semantics.
@labgurl123 This is late, but I think I just figured out a couple of things about the song from a lot of these comments. I think because of the religious overtones, a lot of people are getting lost in semantics.
The song talks about the difficulty of growing up without a role model. Before the boy offs himself at the end, it looks like the last trouble he had was with some friends at home playing spin the bottle, being locked in with a girl in a closet (‘missy’, being a generic name for some unknown miss), getting half...
The song talks about the difficulty of growing up without a role model. Before the boy offs himself at the end, it looks like the last trouble he had was with some friends at home playing spin the bottle, being locked in with a girl in a closet (‘missy’, being a generic name for some unknown miss), getting half hard or half soft (slipping down the bottom of a halfway rush of blood) in a way that wasn’t appropriate and fumbling to leave out of embarrassment (looking for a light switch when the lights were off). We know it was something pretty bad if it became the last part of his story and it makes sense for it to be a sexual mistake for a story about not having fatherly guidance.
And I think the lines at the end (what’s the son of man and a boy to do?) are a tongue in cheek way to extend the metaphor into a partly hopeful context of religious parallel… Saying that a story of a boy without a father is a lot like the story of Jesus. With lots of suffering and eventually death, for something that was really set off by the father figure (or absence of one). To me, it reads as “what’s a boy to do / what’s the son of man to do (without the father)?” With maybe the goal of contextualizing a person’s hardships more around their upbringing. There’s some further meaning, I think, in the last lines about how maybe accepting some kind of religious father figure / ‘man in his heart’ could be a replacement for a physical father figure. However, in this story, it seems that both Jesus and the boy are sitting there disappointed as neither physical nor spiritual father intervened in what could have been the boy’s salvation (holy kiss).