SAT IN YOUR LAP concerns alienation and the 'blessing or curse' to (want to) see deeper. The opening lines express exclusion from the ordered, functioning bourgeois world. Projecting ability onto others but not being able to fit into the "triviality of everydayness". It 'hurts' because it is not real enough. Colin Wilson describes two types of Outsider: the one who feels excluded from knowledge; and the one who Knows (the godlike '...I'm King'). The song pendulates between these high and low mental states. (Go see 'The Outsider', Colin Wilson, 1956.)
'When I'm king' everything fits into place and you see knowledge is Sat In Your Lap. But 'when I'm dunce' (see video for SIYL), there is nothing there/within.
SIYL also highlights the dangers of (deluded) knowledge and the knowledge-quest... Adolf Hitler: ‘By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven ... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed’ (Mein Kampf) ...
Choose wisely your teachers!
The song regards philosophical enquiry - The Longest Journey - as a religious experience... effort, balance, frustration, realisation...
It reminds me of ANNE SEXTON'S "GODS" ...
And maybe the search ends with:
"Ha, ha, ha
Ho, ho, ho
And a couple of tra - la - las
That's how we laugh the day away
In the Merry Old Land of Oz!"
SAT IN YOUR LAP concerns alienation and the 'blessing or curse' to (want to) see deeper. The opening lines express exclusion from the ordered, functioning bourgeois world. Projecting ability onto others but not being able to fit into the "triviality of everydayness". It 'hurts' because it is not real enough. Colin Wilson describes two types of Outsider: the one who feels excluded from knowledge; and the one who Knows (the godlike '...I'm King'). The song pendulates between these high and low mental states. (Go see 'The Outsider', Colin Wilson, 1956.)
'When I'm king' everything fits into place and you see knowledge is Sat In Your Lap. But 'when I'm dunce' (see video for SIYL), there is nothing there/within.
SIYL also highlights the dangers of (deluded) knowledge and the knowledge-quest... Adolf Hitler: ‘By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell, heaven ... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed’ (Mein Kampf) ... Choose wisely your teachers!
The song regards philosophical enquiry - The Longest Journey - as a religious experience... effort, balance, frustration, realisation... It reminds me of ANNE SEXTON'S "GODS" ...
And maybe the search ends with: "Ha, ha, ha Ho, ho, ho And a couple of tra - la - las That's how we laugh the day away In the Merry Old Land of Oz!"