To me it's about identity. It sounds like when he says "i've searched and searched from crown to toe but there's no trace of you" the speaker is addressing a past version of himself. We, as people, are constantly in flux, our personalities changing faster than we realise, to the point where sometimes, if we look back five or ten years at our former selves, it's very difficult to believe that we were once like that. The history/histology and biography/biology wordplay is particularly significant, because both comparisons deal with the contrast of the story of a person's life with their cellular/biological formation. In the end, although it's difficult to stomach, "we're just a sum of parts".
To me it's about identity. It sounds like when he says "i've searched and searched from crown to toe but there's no trace of you" the speaker is addressing a past version of himself. We, as people, are constantly in flux, our personalities changing faster than we realise, to the point where sometimes, if we look back five or ten years at our former selves, it's very difficult to believe that we were once like that. The history/histology and biography/biology wordplay is particularly significant, because both comparisons deal with the contrast of the story of a person's life with their cellular/biological formation. In the end, although it's difficult to stomach, "we're just a sum of parts".
this song is about looking at a dead friend in a casket.
this song is about looking at a dead friend in a casket.