"Desole" isn't just a French way of saying sorry :)
Aside from being a common girl's name in English speaking countries (which seems bloody odd to me), it comes from the Latin verb "desolare" - to leave alone.
I don't care what Rice said on TV - this is a song about depression.
The Grey Room is a state of mind rather than a place. For those of you who have ever gone through periods of serious depression (not just a couple tears because you got dumped - I'm talking the full blown you're-clinically-depressed-according-to-the-DSM-IV-criteria kind of depression), you probably know the feeling of being alone no matter how many people are present.
Also, while seriously depressed, people often experience lowered activitiy in the left frontal lobe, which is one of the more rational bits of the brain - it's part of what keeps you from jumping on a table at a party, stripping your clothes off, and announcing that you're Jesus Christ (note that alcohol can temporarily short-circuit this inhibition), and people wind up spending a little more time with their right frontal lobes - a bit of the brain that doesn't understand time, order, or much of anything concrete. Creativity can result (provided you can still get out of bed) when the right frontal lobe is no longer being balanced out by a healthy left frontal lobe.
In other words, I think his Grey Room is clinical depression, and the reason he writes songs when he's there is that he has the decrease in left frontal lobe activity, allowing his right frontal lobe to do as it will.
'Course, I'm just speculating, and I don't think he consciously realized the connection between depression and creativity - it just turned up, and he used his very nice Damien Rice brain to convert sadness into something beautiful.
"Desole" isn't just a French way of saying sorry :)
Aside from being a common girl's name in English speaking countries (which seems bloody odd to me), it comes from the Latin verb "desolare" - to leave alone.
I don't care what Rice said on TV - this is a song about depression.
The Grey Room is a state of mind rather than a place. For those of you who have ever gone through periods of serious depression (not just a couple tears because you got dumped - I'm talking the full blown you're-clinically-depressed-according-to-the-DSM-IV-criteria kind of depression), you probably know the feeling of being alone no matter how many people are present.
Also, while seriously depressed, people often experience lowered activitiy in the left frontal lobe, which is one of the more rational bits of the brain - it's part of what keeps you from jumping on a table at a party, stripping your clothes off, and announcing that you're Jesus Christ (note that alcohol can temporarily short-circuit this inhibition), and people wind up spending a little more time with their right frontal lobes - a bit of the brain that doesn't understand time, order, or much of anything concrete. Creativity can result (provided you can still get out of bed) when the right frontal lobe is no longer being balanced out by a healthy left frontal lobe.
In other words, I think his Grey Room is clinical depression, and the reason he writes songs when he's there is that he has the decrease in left frontal lobe activity, allowing his right frontal lobe to do as it will.
'Course, I'm just speculating, and I don't think he consciously realized the connection between depression and creativity - it just turned up, and he used his very nice Damien Rice brain to convert sadness into something beautiful.
Yup.
That's what I think...