It's interesting that people have interpreted this song both as supporting unscientific medicine (astrology, bleeding, etc.) and as a renunciation of it. I think that kind of gets to the heart of the matter as this is a really ambivalent song. The line, "Haven't you found that the systems for planning always fail?" seems to indicate a skepticism about the existence of intelligible order in the universe, which the system of astrology takes for granted. But then, what was the unavoidable entity that gave daddy his heart attack? I'm assuming the expected answer is not obesity or heart disease. That question seems to imply a fatalistic mindset in which there IS order in the universe, and which WOULD allow for a predictive system like astrology to make sense.
The speaker then introduces the idea of blood-letting as a form of medieval medicine, inhabiting an ancient motherly persona: "Oh, honey I know it hurts." Does she really think "this will really work"? Or is this another jab at outdated attempts to understand and control our environment?
I could see a reading which reduces the whole thing to a sarcastic tirade against (specifically bogus) human atempts to understand the world, the "systems for planning" which inevitably fail; but I think the line, "Can you avoid what gave daddy his heart attack?" seriously undermines this reading.
It's interesting that people have interpreted this song both as supporting unscientific medicine (astrology, bleeding, etc.) and as a renunciation of it. I think that kind of gets to the heart of the matter as this is a really ambivalent song. The line, "Haven't you found that the systems for planning always fail?" seems to indicate a skepticism about the existence of intelligible order in the universe, which the system of astrology takes for granted. But then, what was the unavoidable entity that gave daddy his heart attack? I'm assuming the expected answer is not obesity or heart disease. That question seems to imply a fatalistic mindset in which there IS order in the universe, and which WOULD allow for a predictive system like astrology to make sense.
The speaker then introduces the idea of blood-letting as a form of medieval medicine, inhabiting an ancient motherly persona: "Oh, honey I know it hurts." Does she really think "this will really work"? Or is this another jab at outdated attempts to understand and control our environment?
I could see a reading which reduces the whole thing to a sarcastic tirade against (specifically bogus) human atempts to understand the world, the "systems for planning" which inevitably fail; but I think the line, "Can you avoid what gave daddy his heart attack?" seriously undermines this reading.