What I love about James Mercer's lyrics is that they can be so infinitely interpretable.
I think this song is about a person who recedes from people; a person who has trouble letting others in; a person who insists on isolating himself because it is all he knows how to do. This person cuts people out of his life and turns his back on them, and when he inevitably begins to feel lonely, he replaces those people with new friends/relationships. Such a cycle has a tendency to continue until the person catches it and learns to work on the real problem.
The narrator is sick of fighting this person, just to stay in his life and is finally throwing up his hands, saying "You're so tired of suffocating under the pressures of other human beings ["life under water"] (or "you're so tired of burning up in the problems of other human beings" ["life at this temperature"]: Both are metaphors I have used in my day-to-day life) and you're so blind to the people who love you, so just do it, close your eyes to us, turn your back on us. You're preaching to the choir, man, because I'm done with this." The narrator also mentions the "fools" who, like himself, fruitlessly exhaust themselves in futile attempts to be let in by this person (which also ties to the line, "young lad we've grown too tired").
Pain is a good teacher and hindsight is 20/20: "trap doors to endless wisdom" teach us a hard lesson. I have seen so many many friends, significant others, and family members give up on me and give me my own treatment, turning their backs and closing their eyes to me--the final surrender to helplessness. And that is what I hear when I listen to this song.
What I love about James Mercer's lyrics is that they can be so infinitely interpretable.
I think this song is about a person who recedes from people; a person who has trouble letting others in; a person who insists on isolating himself because it is all he knows how to do. This person cuts people out of his life and turns his back on them, and when he inevitably begins to feel lonely, he replaces those people with new friends/relationships. Such a cycle has a tendency to continue until the person catches it and learns to work on the real problem.
The narrator is sick of fighting this person, just to stay in his life and is finally throwing up his hands, saying "You're so tired of suffocating under the pressures of other human beings ["life under water"] (or "you're so tired of burning up in the problems of other human beings" ["life at this temperature"]: Both are metaphors I have used in my day-to-day life) and you're so blind to the people who love you, so just do it, close your eyes to us, turn your back on us. You're preaching to the choir, man, because I'm done with this." The narrator also mentions the "fools" who, like himself, fruitlessly exhaust themselves in futile attempts to be let in by this person (which also ties to the line, "young lad we've grown too tired").
Pain is a good teacher and hindsight is 20/20: "trap doors to endless wisdom" teach us a hard lesson. I have seen so many many friends, significant others, and family members give up on me and give me my own treatment, turning their backs and closing their eyes to me--the final surrender to helplessness. And that is what I hear when I listen to this song.
I agree completely
I agree completely