I'm inclined to go along with 'zenful' as it seems pretty intense and dreamy. The sort of intensity and abberational visualization that occurs with dropping acid, or perhaps doing peyote. As it happens my hometown was Tulsa and we seldom got very much snow, nor did we have palm trees to chop down.
It is interesting to compare this song to "After The Gold Rush" which I also saw as a trippy dream set of lyrics. However, in that song the visualizations were relatively easy to relate to concerns about the environment, troubled personal relationships, and drugs, a still present dark...
I'm inclined to go along with 'zenful' as it seems pretty intense and dreamy. The sort of intensity and abberational visualization that occurs with dropping acid, or perhaps doing peyote. As it happens my hometown was Tulsa and we seldom got very much snow, nor did we have palm trees to chop down.
It is interesting to compare this song to "After The Gold Rush" which I also saw as a trippy dream set of lyrics. However, in that song the visualizations were relatively easy to relate to concerns about the environment, troubled personal relationships, and drugs, a still present dark side of his life at that time. Interestingly, all the other songs on the title album were more direct in their meaning such as the acerbic anti discrimination themed "Southern Man" or the drug related "Don't Let It Bring You Down", a direct reference to a band member caught in the spell of heroin and who later died, which in turn prompted Young's "The Needle And The Damage Done" on a later album.
Any way you view it you have to admire how rich Neil Young's lyrics are and how he wields the lyrics the way a painter wields a brush...to evoke images that amuse and dismay us, or simply make us feel a little discomfort. Like TheThornBirds posted above, "The Last Trip To Tulsa" is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, perhaps because of (instead of in-spite-of) the elusiveness of any apparent rationale. The lyrics therefore being unreachable to most,, are at least accompanied by Neil Young's use of intonation, delay, and draw out, and a very powerful yet almost monosyllabic chord play set to change ups in rythm and intensity that gives the whole song a feel of impending doom.
The more I listen to it, the more I think it's about either LSD trips or dreams that Neil experienced, but I'm not really sure.
I'm inclined to go along with 'zenful' as it seems pretty intense and dreamy. The sort of intensity and abberational visualization that occurs with dropping acid, or perhaps doing peyote. As it happens my hometown was Tulsa and we seldom got very much snow, nor did we have palm trees to chop down. It is interesting to compare this song to "After The Gold Rush" which I also saw as a trippy dream set of lyrics. However, in that song the visualizations were relatively easy to relate to concerns about the environment, troubled personal relationships, and drugs, a still present dark...
I'm inclined to go along with 'zenful' as it seems pretty intense and dreamy. The sort of intensity and abberational visualization that occurs with dropping acid, or perhaps doing peyote. As it happens my hometown was Tulsa and we seldom got very much snow, nor did we have palm trees to chop down. It is interesting to compare this song to "After The Gold Rush" which I also saw as a trippy dream set of lyrics. However, in that song the visualizations were relatively easy to relate to concerns about the environment, troubled personal relationships, and drugs, a still present dark side of his life at that time. Interestingly, all the other songs on the title album were more direct in their meaning such as the acerbic anti discrimination themed "Southern Man" or the drug related "Don't Let It Bring You Down", a direct reference to a band member caught in the spell of heroin and who later died, which in turn prompted Young's "The Needle And The Damage Done" on a later album. Any way you view it you have to admire how rich Neil Young's lyrics are and how he wields the lyrics the way a painter wields a brush...to evoke images that amuse and dismay us, or simply make us feel a little discomfort. Like TheThornBirds posted above, "The Last Trip To Tulsa" is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, perhaps because of (instead of in-spite-of) the elusiveness of any apparent rationale. The lyrics therefore being unreachable to most,, are at least accompanied by Neil Young's use of intonation, delay, and draw out, and a very powerful yet almost monosyllabic chord play set to change ups in rythm and intensity that gives the whole song a feel of impending doom.