This song is about life. Not the girlfriend or the literal interpretation involving Walter Reed.
‘Count the cases piled up high’. What cases? On a train platform for people leaving? Or a hospital ward for people ailing? It doesn’t matter because they are all the ‘…same routine’. It’s the same picture of life’s casualties. They are there every day. And it’s because the singer’s life suffers from the fact that ‘every good thing I new abandoned me’. And its about the repetitiveness of life, the routine, and that change is nigh impossible!
He is saying this about HIS life. That he is the way he is and he wants to be made better, hence, ‘…take me to Walter Reed’. It was used on ‘House’, essentially about a misanthropic man who happens to be a Doctor; ‘Count the cases piled up high’ of which he is one. He also thought he had found meaning which is why he went to College but ‘…. everything I learned inside didn't seem to pay’. The fun of life is also routine when he says ‘ I’ve had my fill of Palm trees…’ etc. He is fed up with life and probably depressed.
This is why its such a great song. In the hopelessness of life you find great art, which this is. Like ‘ Reading Gaol’ by Oscar Wilde where he finally found his soul and wrote ‘De Profundis’. If you listen to ‘Crying’ by Roy Orbison this is about a man who meets someone, who dumped him earlier, and they have a superficial conversation but he is still hurting inside. We have all had those moments where we are ripped up inside and have gone home to cry but Roy Orbison managed to go home and write about it from his soul and the rest is history.
Michael Penn has also written about what we feel (hopefully occasionally) about life and the desolation of it all. ‘Tell me now what more do you need’. The YOU is us and all the people he has ever known. What is the point? It’s a great song borne out of pain but rather than feel self-pity on its own (which he does) he has also written about his feelings and hopefully he feels a great deal better by realising that the ‘YOU’ is him and the answer lies there.
This song is about life. Not the girlfriend or the literal interpretation involving Walter Reed.
‘Count the cases piled up high’. What cases? On a train platform for people leaving? Or a hospital ward for people ailing? It doesn’t matter because they are all the ‘…same routine’. It’s the same picture of life’s casualties. They are there every day. And it’s because the singer’s life suffers from the fact that ‘every good thing I new abandoned me’. And its about the repetitiveness of life, the routine, and that change is nigh impossible!
He is saying this about HIS life. That he is the way he is and he wants to be made better, hence, ‘…take me to Walter Reed’. It was used on ‘House’, essentially about a misanthropic man who happens to be a Doctor; ‘Count the cases piled up high’ of which he is one. He also thought he had found meaning which is why he went to College but ‘…. everything I learned inside didn't seem to pay’. The fun of life is also routine when he says ‘ I’ve had my fill of Palm trees…’ etc. He is fed up with life and probably depressed.
This is why its such a great song. In the hopelessness of life you find great art, which this is. Like ‘ Reading Gaol’ by Oscar Wilde where he finally found his soul and wrote ‘De Profundis’. If you listen to ‘Crying’ by Roy Orbison this is about a man who meets someone, who dumped him earlier, and they have a superficial conversation but he is still hurting inside. We have all had those moments where we are ripped up inside and have gone home to cry but Roy Orbison managed to go home and write about it from his soul and the rest is history.
Michael Penn has also written about what we feel (hopefully occasionally) about life and the desolation of it all. ‘Tell me now what more do you need’. The YOU is us and all the people he has ever known. What is the point? It’s a great song borne out of pain but rather than feel self-pity on its own (which he does) he has also written about his feelings and hopefully he feels a great deal better by realising that the ‘YOU’ is him and the answer lies there.