Roger Miller, on the second album of his solo career--when he sought to play primarily acoustic instruments, his hearing damaged by years of very loud Mission of Burma shows--wrote a song called "Age of Reason". In it he portrays a society in which the ruling animals calmly read newspapers while humans desperately struggle for survival. The image of animals hunting people: it would seem he's given this more than a little thought.
It is perhaps only a small detail of this song, which appears to be wrestling with philosophical questions of perception and identity. Mission of Burma lyrics were often astonishing in their intellectual subtlety. Some are a bit more obvious, though no less weighty in their subject matter. Consider "New Nails" from the Vs. LP, with the lines, "The Roman Empire never died/Just changed into the Catholic Church": a song which ultimately presents a scenario--of a Second Coming in which Earthly institutions have changed little since the Crucifixion--possibly inspired by the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.
Roger Miller, on the second album of his solo career--when he sought to play primarily acoustic instruments, his hearing damaged by years of very loud Mission of Burma shows--wrote a song called "Age of Reason". In it he portrays a society in which the ruling animals calmly read newspapers while humans desperately struggle for survival. The image of animals hunting people: it would seem he's given this more than a little thought.
It is perhaps only a small detail of this song, which appears to be wrestling with philosophical questions of perception and identity. Mission of Burma lyrics were often astonishing in their intellectual subtlety. Some are a bit more obvious, though no less weighty in their subject matter. Consider "New Nails" from the Vs. LP, with the lines, "The Roman Empire never died/Just changed into the Catholic Church": a song which ultimately presents a scenario--of a Second Coming in which Earthly institutions have changed little since the Crucifixion--possibly inspired by the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter of Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.