I'm not sure why such a parallel needs to be drawn with the demise of cLOUDDEAD and all that. How many times have you been doing something horribly boring and imagined yourself living a more exciting life to pass the time? Maybe he's a "sad assassin" because he's stuck in the basement on Fairmount Street washing his clothes and he wishes he could be out in the world murdering folks and gettin' it on with the ladies.
It's a very visual song, starting with a scene of action-movie tension and unexpected sensual allure, and then flipping to an ugly laundry room where he sits alone, perhaps waiting for the spin cycle to finish. I think these lines:
in the basement, i feel
like a loop of the last eight frames of film
before a slow motion lee harvey oswald
gets shot in the gut and killed
point to his longing for adventure and excitement (and on another level, for the release of death), even after coming back to his rather uneventful reality. Before Oswald was killed, he was, after all, just going about his daily activities, without any indication that his life was about to end, and then... BAM. If it could happen to Oswald, why couldn't it happen to Yoni, sitting there in that basement?
There's just so much in the song that's right there in front of your face that I don't feel the need to take it beyond that to a metaphorical level. It's a wonderful snapshot of someone's -- really, anyone's -- state of mind in a moment of boredom.
I'm not sure why such a parallel needs to be drawn with the demise of cLOUDDEAD and all that. How many times have you been doing something horribly boring and imagined yourself living a more exciting life to pass the time? Maybe he's a "sad assassin" because he's stuck in the basement on Fairmount Street washing his clothes and he wishes he could be out in the world murdering folks and gettin' it on with the ladies.
It's a very visual song, starting with a scene of action-movie tension and unexpected sensual allure, and then flipping to an ugly laundry room where he sits alone, perhaps waiting for the spin cycle to finish. I think these lines:
in the basement, i feel like a loop of the last eight frames of film before a slow motion lee harvey oswald gets shot in the gut and killed
point to his longing for adventure and excitement (and on another level, for the release of death), even after coming back to his rather uneventful reality. Before Oswald was killed, he was, after all, just going about his daily activities, without any indication that his life was about to end, and then... BAM. If it could happen to Oswald, why couldn't it happen to Yoni, sitting there in that basement?
There's just so much in the song that's right there in front of your face that I don't feel the need to take it beyond that to a metaphorical level. It's a wonderful snapshot of someone's -- really, anyone's -- state of mind in a moment of boredom.