I don't think it's about heroin or television. I think it's a bit more simple than that, actually.
I've been listening to this song repeatedly for the last little while, really getting into it, and I think that, more than anything, it's about domestic violence. In particular, intergenerational domestic violence. The name "Tom Violence" could be anyone, but the fact that "Violence" is apparently a last name links it to family inheritance. A child of violence, if you will---one of the "violence" family, someone whose connection to their parents is "violence."
The song starts out with what sounds like a justification for violence with reference to several parallel metaphors. It's a dream, first of all, and then a "real dream"---later, a "thing in my memory holding on for dear life." Anyone who has been abused at an early age knows that it's often hard to remember whether it was real or just a "dream," as in memory everything gets a little hazy.
It's also several obscure physical symbols, which also sound like bits and pieces of memories. A "skinny arm," a "sinking head nodding out to rising bliss" (which, in this context, sounds more like a drunken, passed-out parent than a heroin addict).
The repeated lyrical references to the father/girl dichotomy reinforce this. "Find it in the father, find it in a girl," "I left home for experience," etc.
The ending is very disturbing. "I'm sleeping nights awake"---living and acting out one's dreams, so to speak. "The dream coming out of the girl," is "the thing beating up under my flesh," the uncontrollable, inherited tendency towards violence.
I consider this an extremely powerful song about domestic violence, simply because it treats it so personally, so much in the abstract, and with such a sense of horror.
Also, call me crazy, but the guitar chords seem (to me at least) to simulate the "as above, so below" theme---at the end, the fast strumming of three higher notes, followed by three lower notes, in succession.
I don't think it's about heroin or television. I think it's a bit more simple than that, actually.
I've been listening to this song repeatedly for the last little while, really getting into it, and I think that, more than anything, it's about domestic violence. In particular, intergenerational domestic violence. The name "Tom Violence" could be anyone, but the fact that "Violence" is apparently a last name links it to family inheritance. A child of violence, if you will---one of the "violence" family, someone whose connection to their parents is "violence."
The song starts out with what sounds like a justification for violence with reference to several parallel metaphors. It's a dream, first of all, and then a "real dream"---later, a "thing in my memory holding on for dear life." Anyone who has been abused at an early age knows that it's often hard to remember whether it was real or just a "dream," as in memory everything gets a little hazy.
It's also several obscure physical symbols, which also sound like bits and pieces of memories. A "skinny arm," a "sinking head nodding out to rising bliss" (which, in this context, sounds more like a drunken, passed-out parent than a heroin addict).
The repeated lyrical references to the father/girl dichotomy reinforce this. "Find it in the father, find it in a girl," "I left home for experience," etc.
The ending is very disturbing. "I'm sleeping nights awake"---living and acting out one's dreams, so to speak. "The dream coming out of the girl," is "the thing beating up under my flesh," the uncontrollable, inherited tendency towards violence.
I consider this an extremely powerful song about domestic violence, simply because it treats it so personally, so much in the abstract, and with such a sense of horror.
Also, call me crazy, but the guitar chords seem (to me at least) to simulate the "as above, so below" theme---at the end, the fast strumming of three higher notes, followed by three lower notes, in succession.