JE’s lyrics are SO hard to interpret, but I’m taking a crack at this one. He has a fundamentalist Christian background, which I think began during the Sunny Day Real Estate days. Then, he seemed to ease off the whole religious thing for a while. So I think that in this song, he’s worrying about god, eternity, his salvation, etc. In the first part he’s wrestling with afterlife stuff, then in the second part he elaborates on how much it’s tearing him up. In the third section, when he says, “all half read, words half said, politicians fill my head” I think he might be saying that he doesn’t know how to find the truth or who to trust. There are tons of people, including him, and including pastors/teachers in today’s fundamentalist movement who are relatively uneducated but speak with certainty, arguing against each other (like politicians), so it’s like, who do you trust and how do you know? So then “Am I safe?” would be referring to salvation, since they call it being saved. The last line is sad to me, “Can I run back to you?” but I have two interpretations of it. He feels like he’s drifted away from god and he either 1) wants to know if he can get his salvation back, or 2) misses the feelings he had in the beginning and wants that back, like it’s gotten complicated and he just wants the simplistic devotion to god back. Either way, it’s desperate and sad and I think a lot of us can relate. Poor guy.
JE’s lyrics are SO hard to interpret, but I’m taking a crack at this one. He has a fundamentalist Christian background, which I think began during the Sunny Day Real Estate days. Then, he seemed to ease off the whole religious thing for a while. So I think that in this song, he’s worrying about god, eternity, his salvation, etc. In the first part he’s wrestling with afterlife stuff, then in the second part he elaborates on how much it’s tearing him up. In the third section, when he says, “all half read, words half said, politicians fill my head” I think he might be saying that he doesn’t know how to find the truth or who to trust. There are tons of people, including him, and including pastors/teachers in today’s fundamentalist movement who are relatively uneducated but speak with certainty, arguing against each other (like politicians), so it’s like, who do you trust and how do you know? So then “Am I safe?” would be referring to salvation, since they call it being saved. The last line is sad to me, “Can I run back to you?” but I have two interpretations of it. He feels like he’s drifted away from god and he either 1) wants to know if he can get his salvation back, or 2) misses the feelings he had in the beginning and wants that back, like it’s gotten complicated and he just wants the simplistic devotion to god back. Either way, it’s desperate and sad and I think a lot of us can relate. Poor guy.