LOVE the lyrics on this one. The new album is just warming up to me...
It's all about the long division and an extended metaphor here. It's an amazing one, a perfect description of this kind of relationship he's talking about. Just genius.
So we know long division works on fractions, like 28 divided by 7. That one divides evenly, without a remainder. It just equals 4. It's easy.
But if you've got two numbers like 31 and 7, trying to divide 31 by 7 results in 4 and 3/7. It's not even. If you keep dividing forever, it'll go on forever and it'll never resolve, it will never be perfect.
That's what he says - "It was clear with every page / That they were farther away / From a solution that would play / Without a remainder." He's actually talking about manual long division on paper - you can go on for pages dividing and adding and dividing and adding, but with an irrational number, you will never reach a simple result, there will always be that same remainder.
It is uncanny and kind of amazing how well this describes a bad relationship. Two people, as incompatible as prime numbers, will never end in a clean result. They can go on and on forever in a cycle of misunderstanding and confusion, but they will never be truly happy if they are so different that they can't understand each other, and especially if things are so fuzzy that they never make it to the next level. But they keep trying 'cause that's what you do, you try to make it work and you don't want to be alone, you don't want to be a remainder again.
In long division, eventually you just have to give up and put down the remainder. After a while, it's obvious that patterns keep repeating, in fact that's how you tell.
In a relationship that's going on endlessly without getting anywhere, you have to do the same thing. And he's always stuck there, with that remainder, with what's left from trying to make it work for so long.
But, if he's been trying with so many numbers that he has so many remainders, maybe it is like long division - maybe he's prime. In that case he's looking for 1 or himself. And his problem is that he's looking to divide by 1, to find that person who truly matches him yet is so different from him. Meanwhile everyone else is probably just looking to Multiply, and not worrying about remainders.
And I get the sense that he's actually doing this to himself, because "He was always distracted / By the very mention of an open door / 'Cause he had sworn not to be what he'd been before". So, the very mention of division is what starts the process, he's dividing himself. I think (personally) that the key to a successful relationship is addition. No remainder, no mess, just more of a good thing. Combine that with a little multiplication and you've got a good thing.
I really like this song. It's unfortunately familiar, but just absolutely amazing to me how well this analogy fits the situation. Being a logic-oriented person, hearing it was like having a light-bulb go off in my head, a total epiphany. Thanks Ben.
LOVE the lyrics on this one. The new album is just warming up to me...
It's all about the long division and an extended metaphor here. It's an amazing one, a perfect description of this kind of relationship he's talking about. Just genius.
So we know long division works on fractions, like 28 divided by 7. That one divides evenly, without a remainder. It just equals 4. It's easy.
But if you've got two numbers like 31 and 7, trying to divide 31 by 7 results in 4 and 3/7. It's not even. If you keep dividing forever, it'll go on forever and it'll never resolve, it will never be perfect.
That's what he says - "It was clear with every page / That they were farther away / From a solution that would play / Without a remainder." He's actually talking about manual long division on paper - you can go on for pages dividing and adding and dividing and adding, but with an irrational number, you will never reach a simple result, there will always be that same remainder.
It is uncanny and kind of amazing how well this describes a bad relationship. Two people, as incompatible as prime numbers, will never end in a clean result. They can go on and on forever in a cycle of misunderstanding and confusion, but they will never be truly happy if they are so different that they can't understand each other, and especially if things are so fuzzy that they never make it to the next level. But they keep trying 'cause that's what you do, you try to make it work and you don't want to be alone, you don't want to be a remainder again.
In long division, eventually you just have to give up and put down the remainder. After a while, it's obvious that patterns keep repeating, in fact that's how you tell.
In a relationship that's going on endlessly without getting anywhere, you have to do the same thing. And he's always stuck there, with that remainder, with what's left from trying to make it work for so long.
But, if he's been trying with so many numbers that he has so many remainders, maybe it is like long division - maybe he's prime. In that case he's looking for 1 or himself. And his problem is that he's looking to divide by 1, to find that person who truly matches him yet is so different from him. Meanwhile everyone else is probably just looking to Multiply, and not worrying about remainders.
And I get the sense that he's actually doing this to himself, because "He was always distracted / By the very mention of an open door / 'Cause he had sworn not to be what he'd been before". So, the very mention of division is what starts the process, he's dividing himself. I think (personally) that the key to a successful relationship is addition. No remainder, no mess, just more of a good thing. Combine that with a little multiplication and you've got a good thing.
I really like this song. It's unfortunately familiar, but just absolutely amazing to me how well this analogy fits the situation. Being a logic-oriented person, hearing it was like having a light-bulb go off in my head, a total epiphany. Thanks Ben.