I feel that this song, though very light on lyrics, is a rather profound satire of humanity's interaction with nature; because of the rapidity of everyday life, Man moves so fast that he seems to have become detached from the beauty of the countryside and of the wilderness. This is not very surprising, as most of Wilkinson's lyrics deal with immersing one's self in the wilderness and nature.
The speaker of the song quips in an ironic tone that he wants to see "the stone steps rounded/and bowed by a billion scuffling soles." The stone steps represent man's harnessing of nature to serve his own purposes (the setting is most likely an industrial city), so that billions of scuffling soles - the working-class zombies, one might argue - can tread upon it (pay attention to the language used; scuffling is an urgent, confused, and stressful act). The speaker also wanting "dirt paths cutting corners," means that going off the beaten path or taking the scenic route is too time-consuming, and therefore trivial; why go the extra distance when man-made roads already exist to travel on?
The second verse of the song refers to the speaker's life at home, where "the evidence of abrasion" can be found "on a wall behind a chair." An abrasion, according to dictionary.com, is 1.
a scraped spot or area; the result of rubbing. He also notes that this evidence "has recorded every end of working day," which probably means that the man has kept a record (in scratches on a wall) of all of the days, presumably as a working-class stiff, that he has been detached from the intricacies of the wilderness that once charmed him as an idealistic young man. And not only is the time away from the wild recording in abrasions, but his displacement from the wild is evidence of an abrasion of his own soul.
Anyway, that's how I viewed it as the young man I am.
I feel that this song, though very light on lyrics, is a rather profound satire of humanity's interaction with nature; because of the rapidity of everyday life, Man moves so fast that he seems to have become detached from the beauty of the countryside and of the wilderness. This is not very surprising, as most of Wilkinson's lyrics deal with immersing one's self in the wilderness and nature.
The speaker of the song quips in an ironic tone that he wants to see "the stone steps rounded/and bowed by a billion scuffling soles." The stone steps represent man's harnessing of nature to serve his own purposes (the setting is most likely an industrial city), so that billions of scuffling soles - the working-class zombies, one might argue - can tread upon it (pay attention to the language used; scuffling is an urgent, confused, and stressful act). The speaker also wanting "dirt paths cutting corners," means that going off the beaten path or taking the scenic route is too time-consuming, and therefore trivial; why go the extra distance when man-made roads already exist to travel on?
The second verse of the song refers to the speaker's life at home, where "the evidence of abrasion" can be found "on a wall behind a chair." An abrasion, according to dictionary.com, is 1. a scraped spot or area; the result of rubbing. He also notes that this evidence "has recorded every end of working day," which probably means that the man has kept a record (in scratches on a wall) of all of the days, presumably as a working-class stiff, that he has been detached from the intricacies of the wilderness that once charmed him as an idealistic young man. And not only is the time away from the wild recording in abrasions, but his displacement from the wild is evidence of an abrasion of his own soul.
Anyway, that's how I viewed it as the young man I am.