First of all: I don't come here to see people shout about how much they love NIN!
Please people, save that crap for fan sites and stop spamming songmeanings.net with
your zombie retardation.
Secondly - I'm so sick of seeing people immediately jump on the first tired old
symbol they can connect with a new song. If you were truly a fan of this artist
you would give him enough credit to start interpreting the song from the basis
that he is writing from some degree of new evolution in life/consciousness.
I don't come here just to see how may votes the drug/gf/depression categories get.
Third - if you connect with a new song on a feeling level there must be a freshness to it
(unless you are a zombie retard or cowardly suburbanite).
Since the meaning of the music itself is immediately obvious on a feeling level, what
we real people come here for is help with understanding the words, especially understanding
how they fit with and connect to the feeling of the music.
Rather than try to put the song's meaning in a nutshell, I will just add a few definite points
I see. I find that the more good points I read before analyzing a song the better the points I have to add will be. To give a truly complete analysis of a song you must genuinely feel you are experiencing what the artist experienced in making the song. For many reasons that probably rarely if ever actually happens.
The line I am the least sure of is "I just made you up to hurt myself"
This seems like an oxymoron if read in the most normal, literal sense.
Since this isn't an especially 'dark' feeling song, I think we can rule out a 'masochistic' interpretation of this line.
Since it isn't masochistic, it means he wasn't planning on hurting himself.
He is being sarcastic I think. Somehow he was tricked or made the mistake of buying into
something or someone that turned out to be an illusion.
With this established I'll take the rest of the lyrics in order.
---I'm becoming less defined as days go by
---Fading away, well you might say I'm losing focus
---Kind of drifting to the abstract
---In terms of how I see myself
To me this is one event, as opposed to later parts in the song.
"abstract" and "see myself" are the core phrases of this block.
His sense of 'what he is' - not WHO but WHAT - is losing concrete value.
What is it exactly that makes the various decisions throughout the day,
when and what to eat, who to meet, where to go, which thoughts seem accurate,
etc. What EXACTLY decides these things?
He doesn't know, his idea of what he is as opposed to the outside world
is becoming blurry, ie "losing focus".
---Sometimes I think I can see right through myself(x3)
---Less concerned about fitting into the world
---Your world that is
--Cause it doesn't really matter any more
He can "see right through himself" perhaps because his idea of himself is
foggy. The things that affect him and what he actually is are blurring together.
Therefore when "he" does something, he can see his actions before they even happen,
like forecasting the weather. Even though in theory if he is choosing to do something
he doesn't actually know it's going to happen until he has made his decision.
Another angle on this group of lines is that his existence doesn't seem to have much
substance. It's not totally nihilistic or solipsistic, he DOES exist, but he's just not very solid anymore.
Now "the world" "your world" is the cultural/scientific map/understanding that we inherit
and update from day to day to navigate/manipulate the waking world (math formulas, traffic laws, history, techniques and ideals/values and so on)
Things have come to the point where he doesn't really know if he is making the right choices.
Or what's worse, if the things he does even have the effect he thinks they do.
Or even worse, if he is actually doing what he's trying to do. The effort he exerts trying to
keep up with all the responsibilities/potentials we supposedly have in life might actually be a total waste ( back to "I just made you up to hurt myself").
---Yes I'm alone, then again I always was
---As far back as I can tell
---I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with
---I just made you up to hurt myself(x5)
---And it worked...yes it did
I believe this song is "almost" solipsism, but technically it's not.
Being alone does not mean that no one else exists anywhere in the universe,
but it means, as far as the musical tone of this song goes:
All that he "knows" or feels about the existence of other spirits/consciousnesses etc
actually just seems like rumors to him now that he really looks at it up close.
He had always assumed that life must be at least a small fraction of what it seems,
now he's beginning to realize that for all practical purposes:
---There is no fucking you! There is only me
"I may as well be dreaming"
seems to me to be the feeling of this song.
The particular main idea of this song is not concerned with discerning dreaming world from waking world, but the sense of being "Only" has overwhelmed everything and anything to the contrary.
---Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye
---And it turned out to be a scab
---And I had this funny feeling
---Like I just knew it's something bad
---I just couldn't leave it alone
---I kept picking at the scab
---It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
For most dreams that I remember, I'm not paying attention to how strange the experiences are
while they are happening. Or if they are nightmares, even if I am terrified in the dream
I'm no where near as terrified as I would be if the thing were to be really happening to me in the waking world. Because in the waking world losing my arm/eye etc would be a major tragedy but in a dream I can have a brand new body in the very next dream.
In dreams while they are happening, no matter how many 'characters' are there, I never stop to realize that I am actually alone, making all these people up. I feel like I'm "really" with someone.
So here he is, in this illusion (almost like a dream, which is why i mentioned dreams)
This illusion is a solution to being alone.
YOUR world, the cultural world, the conclusions and teachings that other
people exist and have these and those sorts of desires and experiences in relation to you
The illusion is that you forget that when you feel you are "with" people
what you are really "with" is your ideas of them, what you think they are feeling inside.
The reality is you actually have no idea what they are feeling!
THERE IS NO FUCKING YOU, THERE IS ONLY ME!
Normally scabs are good, but he is seeing a scab and saying
deep down inside he feels or knows its wrong
He could live blissfully ignorant if he would just choose to
but that kind of existence is just so disgusting and pathetic he can't bring himself to do it
The scab turned out to be a doorway, not a scab on his own being
The scab is on "your world'
the mental simulation we use to navigate the waking world
the Matrix
or the Pretty Hate Machine,
all the same thing actually
The scan is from a damaged part of the machine world
he broke though because he felt deep inside something was wrong with the world
now he finds that he never really had a direct experience of anything but himself
But in his own mind he can see that there IS an outside world
but only according to the understanding he has of his own life
Living and acting as though other people exist works to keep you alive etc
but in the end you never experience anything other than yourself
This is what I think this song is about.
I don't necessarily think Trent Reznor ALWAYS feels this way
but he might
I certainly feel this way most of the time that I am awake and sober
---Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be
---And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see
---And now I know why, ya now I know why
---Things aren't as pretty, on the inside
Now he is 'under the hood' of the machine.
Society teaches us all these false notions about how we work
Pleasant fictions we can entertain ourselves with while we pretend to have meaningful interactions
So that the machine can continue to function using human labor
Now he is having a horrible experience living inside a place that wasn't designed for him
Its like waking up into the real world in the Matrix
a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape where humans never roam only machines
But for this song more specifically
why are things "not as pretty on the inside"
I'm not 100% sure on this what he means
Maybe someone else can help me out
until later
i respect your love for music, and i hope you respect what i am about to say
you nitpik to much on the fine points of the song. music is meant to be felt, enjoyed, supposed to set you free and let you experience emotions. some of the things you say are true and great insights, but you drag on to long and ruin the song when you start relating it to the matrix.
When trent wrote this song, i dont think even he put as much thought into it as you did.
If you want to think this far into things, look...
i respect your love for music, and i hope you respect what i am about to say
you nitpik to much on the fine points of the song. music is meant to be felt, enjoyed, supposed to set you free and let you experience emotions. some of the things you say are true and great insights, but you drag on to long and ruin the song when you start relating it to the matrix.
When trent wrote this song, i dont think even he put as much thought into it as you did.
If you want to think this far into things, look at philosophy or read a book, music has always been more emotional than intellectual, especially if you look at the people writing it.
That said, i think you fall to far away from the meaning of the song in your comments.
If i can offer my opinion:
you said "To give a truly complete analysis of a song you must genuinely feel you are experiencing what the artist experienced in making the song" If you really put yourself in trents shoes, you can easily see himself writing this song about the loss of childhood innocence.
in the song he talks of an imaginary friend he created to help him cope with the ugly realities of the outside world as a child, but eventually grows up and loses his imaginary friend and falls into the real world.
when you are talking about being in a world of machine dominance over humans, i took that whole stanza to mean him growing up and toying with the ideas that maybe everyone isn't nice, that maybe your dog ben didnt run away but died, and toying with these ideas he is picking at this scab, and eventually steps into the adult world. a world in which he sees things he really shouldnt see.
as far as the last line "not as pretty on the inside"
you could take this for face value and say that he is talking about how people put on an outer shell of a fake person to seem nice but on the inside are ugly. or in my interpretaion how adults were nice to him as a kid but now no one treats him nicely anymore because he is grown up and sees how ugly they really are.
Could also be about how he crossed a door earlier in the song into the real world, becoming on the "outside", and now he sees people aren't as pretty as they were on the "inside", the inside being his childhod reality
so yeah. please reply
Well johnnyblueye,
I've been extremely busy and haven't checked the site until today. Here's my respone to your reply on my original comment:
Music is not 'meant' to be any particular way. It is sound used to create an ongoing experience. A more specific definiton than that is 'nitpicking' I think.
I don't see writing from the heart or the mind as things which are mutually exlusive.
The mind is an inner world of experience in which music can be played just like it is played in a real room. People use their minds to analyze, study, and create plans of action to achieve...
Well johnnyblueye,
I've been extremely busy and haven't checked the site until today. Here's my respone to your reply on my original comment:
Music is not 'meant' to be any particular way. It is sound used to create an ongoing experience. A more specific definiton than that is 'nitpicking' I think.
I don't see writing from the heart or the mind as things which are mutually exlusive.
The mind is an inner world of experience in which music can be played just like it is played in a real room. People use their minds to analyze, study, and create plans of action to achieve what the heart desires.
Trent Reznor may or may not have sat for hours thinking over which exact words to use. However this does not mean they are not 'intellectual'. Their is meaning or energy conveyed by the words regardless of how he chose them, unless he used some random number generator to choose them in which case their would be no meaning to them at all except to us as we guess not knowing they are meaningless to Trent.
I'm glad you appreciate some of the insights. I think you are not being flexible enough in reading my original post. I'm not saying Trent is talking about life as if it was "just like in the Matrix." But the concept of a massive mentally simulated world that everyone is connecting to and living inside of is much easier referred to by saying "a Matrix" than re explaining the basic idea over and over again. "Your world" in the lyrics, his concept of himself, were all ideas in his mind - ideas that were given to him or he created for himself without actually ever seeing his 'real' self. He was living in his mind, thinking he knew what was going on outside in the rest of the universe. Now he realizes he has never even been outside his own mind. That is the FEELING I get from this song, once I read the lyrics after listening to the music itself.
I find it extremely annoying that you think I 'drag on too long'. Maybe it is you who are too impatient too fully digest the entire energy this song.
== If you really put yourself in trents shoes, you can easily see himself writing this song about ==the loss of childhood innocence.
OK - I would say more like a long overdue loss of childhood naievete/ignorance and refusal to become a truly mature adult. A mature adult takes responsiblity for understanding life as a whole. However I don't see anything specifically about childhood in these lyrics, even implied vaguely. The only connection to childhood I can think of is that the delusions he is now "waking up to" originate during childhood as our mind become complex enough to have a conception of ourselves, "what we are in the world" in a detailed and powerful way.
====in the song he talks of an imaginary friend he created to help him cope with the ugly ====realities of the outside world as a child, but eventually grows up and loses his imaginary ====friend and falls into the real world.
WTF? imaginary friend? What the heck are you talking about? His imaginary 'friend' would be the delusions he had about himself/the outside world dynamic. I can see that. I don't think that's what you mean though.
===when you are talking about being in a world of machine dominance over humans, i took ===that whole stanza to mean him growing up and toying with the ideas that maybe everyone isn't nice, that maybe your dog ben didnt run away but died, and toying with these ideas he is picking at this scab, and eventually steps into the adult world. a world in which he sees things he really shouldnt see.
OK again - I'm not saying this song is about robots!!!
Fuck
I'm saying, as the movie tried to convey, that thoughts often function like computer programs.
Thoughts about the world which are dysnfunctional and believed strongly can control your life.
Again following the feeling I get from the song, when he is saying "your world" he is really talking to anyone who is listening. "People", 'others'. These others have been part of his delusional thoughts. Once you remove his delusional thoughts, and therefore everything he has come to know about other beings in his life, he is in a bizzare new state where the only thing that seems to be tangible is himself
That's what I'm talking about!
==as far as the last line "not as pretty on the inside"
==you could take this for face value and say that he is talking about how people put on an ==outer shell of a fake person to seem nice but on the inside are ugly. or in my interpretaion ==how adults were nice to him as a kid but now no one treats him nicely anymore because he ==is grown up and sees how ugly they really are.
Alright. I think you are connecting with the song but not deeply enough. Which is why you percieve me as overanalyzing it. I guaruntee there is a lot more to it than what you are seeing.
The ugly outer shell is more complex than people simply being "mean" and "decietful" to each other. They are experiencing a world-wide common set of delusions. What they think they are is different than what they actually are. This makes interactions with most people extremely unpleasant regardless of their intentions.
==Could also be about how he crossed a door earlier in the song into the real world, becoming ==on the "outside", and now he sees people aren't as pretty as they were on the "inside", the ==inside being his childhod reality
Again I don't see anything about a contrast between an adult and childhood reality. The obvious reason for things not being pretty on the inside is that you only see things on their outside!
He was living 'outside' himself, his real self. Ideas don't need to represent every single aspect of reality to be useful. But to work only with ideas of things and never question the ideas against how your physical senses actually create your world is a big mistake. A mistake Trent is realizing he has been making his whole life up to the events/experience/feeling that inspired this song.
Now he is inside the real thing, and its disgusting compared to what he thought it was.
I see the people after our posts are ignoring my complaints and continuing to post rubbish.
Oh well I can't win them all.
Enjoy.
I think y'all need to take your hands off the keyboad, drop the cover, and slowly more back away. Then y'all need to go out for a tall, cold beer and forget about this site:) And Sean, I love NIN's...especially Trent (a god) and Trent's song and video Closer. Due to its imagry and symbolism, the video is the best one ever made. I really really really really like it. And THAT'S my interpretation of this song. (What song was it anyway???)
I think y'all need to take your hands off the keyboad, drop the cover, and slowly more back away. Then y'all need to go out for a tall, cold beer and forget about this site:) And Sean, I love NIN's...especially Trent (a god) and Trent's song and video Closer. Due to its imagry and symbolism, the video is the best one ever made. I really really really really like it. And THAT'S my interpretation of this song. (What song was it anyway???)
@tigerx2374 pretentious teen? fuck off you sound like my parents. I have had enough experience in my lifetime to at least be overpretentious.
@seanbay0120 wow that was a lot to read glad you took the time to respond. So I'm going to keep this short:
lets be honest you ripped me apart - kudos
since its been two years since my post I think I have matured so let me clarify the ongoing experience I get from the song. I get the feeling of a man who has lost touch with who he thought he was due to revelations. He realizes that "there...
@tigerx2374 pretentious teen? fuck off you sound like my parents. I have had enough experience in my lifetime to at least be overpretentious.
@seanbay0120 wow that was a lot to read glad you took the time to respond. So I'm going to keep this short:
lets be honest you ripped me apart - kudos
since its been two years since my post I think I have matured so let me clarify the ongoing experience I get from the song. I get the feeling of a man who has lost touch with who he thought he was due to revelations. He realizes that "there is no you there is only me" - I took this to mean, along with the lines, "I just made you up, to hurt myself" as an imaginary friend the child created. Imaginary friends symbolize to me inner parts of our minds that we make fake realities in order to entertain/console/understand ourselves. But in the end knowing that it was all in our head and hating that. Granted I've never had an imaginary friend so I am talking out of my ass.
More recently I feel the song implies a sort of conscience, a childlike conscience without the support of reality. This defined who he was but slowly he began to see himself differently until he could "see right through himself" as if he realized how fake he was and he hated it.
I like your interpretation of "he is in a bizzare new state where the only thing that seems to be tangible is himself". I understand now your connection to the Matrix. Thoughts can be like computer programs and can run our lives. Getting an outside perspective saves us from this which I believe you connected nicely to the song.
I don't know why I relate this song so much to coming of age probably because I am seventeen and its the only life experience I have to go off of. I used to look up to my dad as a kid even though he was rarely around and a raging alcoholic. When I reached the point in my life when I decided to step out of this mind frame and into another more bitter one of he can go fuck himself it was a major shift and I began to see things differently. I tend to remember that shift when I listen to this song.
First of all: I don't come here to see people shout about how much they love NIN! Please people, save that crap for fan sites and stop spamming songmeanings.net with your zombie retardation.
Secondly - I'm so sick of seeing people immediately jump on the first tired old symbol they can connect with a new song. If you were truly a fan of this artist you would give him enough credit to start interpreting the song from the basis that he is writing from some degree of new evolution in life/consciousness. I don't come here just to see how may votes the drug/gf/depression categories get.
Third - if you connect with a new song on a feeling level there must be a freshness to it (unless you are a zombie retard or cowardly suburbanite). Since the meaning of the music itself is immediately obvious on a feeling level, what we real people come here for is help with understanding the words, especially understanding how they fit with and connect to the feeling of the music.
Rather than try to put the song's meaning in a nutshell, I will just add a few definite points I see. I find that the more good points I read before analyzing a song the better the points I have to add will be. To give a truly complete analysis of a song you must genuinely feel you are experiencing what the artist experienced in making the song. For many reasons that probably rarely if ever actually happens.
The line I am the least sure of is "I just made you up to hurt myself" This seems like an oxymoron if read in the most normal, literal sense. Since this isn't an especially 'dark' feeling song, I think we can rule out a 'masochistic' interpretation of this line. Since it isn't masochistic, it means he wasn't planning on hurting himself. He is being sarcastic I think. Somehow he was tricked or made the mistake of buying into something or someone that turned out to be an illusion.
With this established I'll take the rest of the lyrics in order. ---I'm becoming less defined as days go by ---Fading away, well you might say I'm losing focus ---Kind of drifting to the abstract ---In terms of how I see myself To me this is one event, as opposed to later parts in the song. "abstract" and "see myself" are the core phrases of this block. His sense of 'what he is' - not WHO but WHAT - is losing concrete value. What is it exactly that makes the various decisions throughout the day, when and what to eat, who to meet, where to go, which thoughts seem accurate, etc. What EXACTLY decides these things? He doesn't know, his idea of what he is as opposed to the outside world is becoming blurry, ie "losing focus".
---Sometimes I think I can see right through myself(x3) ---Less concerned about fitting into the world ---Your world that is --Cause it doesn't really matter any more
He can "see right through himself" perhaps because his idea of himself is foggy. The things that affect him and what he actually is are blurring together. Therefore when "he" does something, he can see his actions before they even happen, like forecasting the weather. Even though in theory if he is choosing to do something he doesn't actually know it's going to happen until he has made his decision.
Another angle on this group of lines is that his existence doesn't seem to have much substance. It's not totally nihilistic or solipsistic, he DOES exist, but he's just not very solid anymore.
Now "the world" "your world" is the cultural/scientific map/understanding that we inherit and update from day to day to navigate/manipulate the waking world (math formulas, traffic laws, history, techniques and ideals/values and so on) Things have come to the point where he doesn't really know if he is making the right choices. Or what's worse, if the things he does even have the effect he thinks they do. Or even worse, if he is actually doing what he's trying to do. The effort he exerts trying to keep up with all the responsibilities/potentials we supposedly have in life might actually be a total waste ( back to "I just made you up to hurt myself").
---Yes I'm alone, then again I always was ---As far back as I can tell ---I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with ---I just made you up to hurt myself(x5) ---And it worked...yes it did
I believe this song is "almost" solipsism, but technically it's not. Being alone does not mean that no one else exists anywhere in the universe, but it means, as far as the musical tone of this song goes: All that he "knows" or feels about the existence of other spirits/consciousnesses etc actually just seems like rumors to him now that he really looks at it up close. He had always assumed that life must be at least a small fraction of what it seems, now he's beginning to realize that for all practical purposes: ---There is no fucking you! There is only me
"I may as well be dreaming" seems to me to be the feeling of this song. The particular main idea of this song is not concerned with discerning dreaming world from waking world, but the sense of being "Only" has overwhelmed everything and anything to the contrary.
---Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye ---And it turned out to be a scab ---And I had this funny feeling ---Like I just knew it's something bad ---I just couldn't leave it alone ---I kept picking at the scab ---It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
For most dreams that I remember, I'm not paying attention to how strange the experiences are while they are happening. Or if they are nightmares, even if I am terrified in the dream I'm no where near as terrified as I would be if the thing were to be really happening to me in the waking world. Because in the waking world losing my arm/eye etc would be a major tragedy but in a dream I can have a brand new body in the very next dream.
In dreams while they are happening, no matter how many 'characters' are there, I never stop to realize that I am actually alone, making all these people up. I feel like I'm "really" with someone.
So here he is, in this illusion (almost like a dream, which is why i mentioned dreams) This illusion is a solution to being alone. YOUR world, the cultural world, the conclusions and teachings that other people exist and have these and those sorts of desires and experiences in relation to you The illusion is that you forget that when you feel you are "with" people what you are really "with" is your ideas of them, what you think they are feeling inside. The reality is you actually have no idea what they are feeling!
THERE IS NO FUCKING YOU, THERE IS ONLY ME!
Normally scabs are good, but he is seeing a scab and saying deep down inside he feels or knows its wrong He could live blissfully ignorant if he would just choose to but that kind of existence is just so disgusting and pathetic he can't bring himself to do it
The scab turned out to be a doorway, not a scab on his own being The scab is on "your world' the mental simulation we use to navigate the waking world the Matrix or the Pretty Hate Machine, all the same thing actually The scan is from a damaged part of the machine world he broke though because he felt deep inside something was wrong with the world now he finds that he never really had a direct experience of anything but himself
But in his own mind he can see that there IS an outside world but only according to the understanding he has of his own life Living and acting as though other people exist works to keep you alive etc but in the end you never experience anything other than yourself
This is what I think this song is about. I don't necessarily think Trent Reznor ALWAYS feels this way but he might
I certainly feel this way most of the time that I am awake and sober
---Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be ---And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see ---And now I know why, ya now I know why ---Things aren't as pretty, on the inside
Now he is 'under the hood' of the machine. Society teaches us all these false notions about how we work Pleasant fictions we can entertain ourselves with while we pretend to have meaningful interactions So that the machine can continue to function using human labor Now he is having a horrible experience living inside a place that wasn't designed for him Its like waking up into the real world in the Matrix a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape where humans never roam only machines
But for this song more specifically why are things "not as pretty on the inside" I'm not 100% sure on this what he means Maybe someone else can help me out until later
i respect your love for music, and i hope you respect what i am about to say you nitpik to much on the fine points of the song. music is meant to be felt, enjoyed, supposed to set you free and let you experience emotions. some of the things you say are true and great insights, but you drag on to long and ruin the song when you start relating it to the matrix. When trent wrote this song, i dont think even he put as much thought into it as you did. If you want to think this far into things, look...
i respect your love for music, and i hope you respect what i am about to say you nitpik to much on the fine points of the song. music is meant to be felt, enjoyed, supposed to set you free and let you experience emotions. some of the things you say are true and great insights, but you drag on to long and ruin the song when you start relating it to the matrix. When trent wrote this song, i dont think even he put as much thought into it as you did. If you want to think this far into things, look at philosophy or read a book, music has always been more emotional than intellectual, especially if you look at the people writing it. That said, i think you fall to far away from the meaning of the song in your comments. If i can offer my opinion: you said "To give a truly complete analysis of a song you must genuinely feel you are experiencing what the artist experienced in making the song" If you really put yourself in trents shoes, you can easily see himself writing this song about the loss of childhood innocence. in the song he talks of an imaginary friend he created to help him cope with the ugly realities of the outside world as a child, but eventually grows up and loses his imaginary friend and falls into the real world. when you are talking about being in a world of machine dominance over humans, i took that whole stanza to mean him growing up and toying with the ideas that maybe everyone isn't nice, that maybe your dog ben didnt run away but died, and toying with these ideas he is picking at this scab, and eventually steps into the adult world. a world in which he sees things he really shouldnt see. as far as the last line "not as pretty on the inside" you could take this for face value and say that he is talking about how people put on an outer shell of a fake person to seem nice but on the inside are ugly. or in my interpretaion how adults were nice to him as a kid but now no one treats him nicely anymore because he is grown up and sees how ugly they really are. Could also be about how he crossed a door earlier in the song into the real world, becoming on the "outside", and now he sees people aren't as pretty as they were on the "inside", the inside being his childhod reality so yeah. please reply
Well johnnyblueye, I've been extremely busy and haven't checked the site until today. Here's my respone to your reply on my original comment: Music is not 'meant' to be any particular way. It is sound used to create an ongoing experience. A more specific definiton than that is 'nitpicking' I think. I don't see writing from the heart or the mind as things which are mutually exlusive. The mind is an inner world of experience in which music can be played just like it is played in a real room. People use their minds to analyze, study, and create plans of action to achieve...
Well johnnyblueye, I've been extremely busy and haven't checked the site until today. Here's my respone to your reply on my original comment: Music is not 'meant' to be any particular way. It is sound used to create an ongoing experience. A more specific definiton than that is 'nitpicking' I think. I don't see writing from the heart or the mind as things which are mutually exlusive. The mind is an inner world of experience in which music can be played just like it is played in a real room. People use their minds to analyze, study, and create plans of action to achieve what the heart desires. Trent Reznor may or may not have sat for hours thinking over which exact words to use. However this does not mean they are not 'intellectual'. Their is meaning or energy conveyed by the words regardless of how he chose them, unless he used some random number generator to choose them in which case their would be no meaning to them at all except to us as we guess not knowing they are meaningless to Trent. I'm glad you appreciate some of the insights. I think you are not being flexible enough in reading my original post. I'm not saying Trent is talking about life as if it was "just like in the Matrix." But the concept of a massive mentally simulated world that everyone is connecting to and living inside of is much easier referred to by saying "a Matrix" than re explaining the basic idea over and over again. "Your world" in the lyrics, his concept of himself, were all ideas in his mind - ideas that were given to him or he created for himself without actually ever seeing his 'real' self. He was living in his mind, thinking he knew what was going on outside in the rest of the universe. Now he realizes he has never even been outside his own mind. That is the FEELING I get from this song, once I read the lyrics after listening to the music itself. I find it extremely annoying that you think I 'drag on too long'. Maybe it is you who are too impatient too fully digest the entire energy this song. == If you really put yourself in trents shoes, you can easily see himself writing this song about ==the loss of childhood innocence. OK - I would say more like a long overdue loss of childhood naievete/ignorance and refusal to become a truly mature adult. A mature adult takes responsiblity for understanding life as a whole. However I don't see anything specifically about childhood in these lyrics, even implied vaguely. The only connection to childhood I can think of is that the delusions he is now "waking up to" originate during childhood as our mind become complex enough to have a conception of ourselves, "what we are in the world" in a detailed and powerful way. ====in the song he talks of an imaginary friend he created to help him cope with the ugly ====realities of the outside world as a child, but eventually grows up and loses his imaginary ====friend and falls into the real world. WTF? imaginary friend? What the heck are you talking about? His imaginary 'friend' would be the delusions he had about himself/the outside world dynamic. I can see that. I don't think that's what you mean though.
===when you are talking about being in a world of machine dominance over humans, i took ===that whole stanza to mean him growing up and toying with the ideas that maybe everyone isn't nice, that maybe your dog ben didnt run away but died, and toying with these ideas he is picking at this scab, and eventually steps into the adult world. a world in which he sees things he really shouldnt see. OK again - I'm not saying this song is about robots!!! Fuck I'm saying, as the movie tried to convey, that thoughts often function like computer programs. Thoughts about the world which are dysnfunctional and believed strongly can control your life. Again following the feeling I get from the song, when he is saying "your world" he is really talking to anyone who is listening. "People", 'others'. These others have been part of his delusional thoughts. Once you remove his delusional thoughts, and therefore everything he has come to know about other beings in his life, he is in a bizzare new state where the only thing that seems to be tangible is himself That's what I'm talking about! ==as far as the last line "not as pretty on the inside" ==you could take this for face value and say that he is talking about how people put on an ==outer shell of a fake person to seem nice but on the inside are ugly. or in my interpretaion ==how adults were nice to him as a kid but now no one treats him nicely anymore because he ==is grown up and sees how ugly they really are. Alright. I think you are connecting with the song but not deeply enough. Which is why you percieve me as overanalyzing it. I guaruntee there is a lot more to it than what you are seeing. The ugly outer shell is more complex than people simply being "mean" and "decietful" to each other. They are experiencing a world-wide common set of delusions. What they think they are is different than what they actually are. This makes interactions with most people extremely unpleasant regardless of their intentions.
==Could also be about how he crossed a door earlier in the song into the real world, becoming ==on the "outside", and now he sees people aren't as pretty as they were on the "inside", the ==inside being his childhod reality Again I don't see anything about a contrast between an adult and childhood reality. The obvious reason for things not being pretty on the inside is that you only see things on their outside! He was living 'outside' himself, his real self. Ideas don't need to represent every single aspect of reality to be useful. But to work only with ideas of things and never question the ideas against how your physical senses actually create your world is a big mistake. A mistake Trent is realizing he has been making his whole life up to the events/experience/feeling that inspired this song. Now he is inside the real thing, and its disgusting compared to what he thought it was. I see the people after our posts are ignoring my complaints and continuing to post rubbish. Oh well I can't win them all. Enjoy.
Seanbay - absofuckinglutley! Great write up and analysis. Johnnyblueeye is just another PRETENTIOUS teen who thinks he has a clue.
Seanbay - absofuckinglutley! Great write up and analysis. Johnnyblueeye is just another PRETENTIOUS teen who thinks he has a clue.
I think y'all need to take your hands off the keyboad, drop the cover, and slowly more back away. Then y'all need to go out for a tall, cold beer and forget about this site:) And Sean, I love NIN's...especially Trent (a god) and Trent's song and video Closer. Due to its imagry and symbolism, the video is the best one ever made. I really really really really like it. And THAT'S my interpretation of this song. (What song was it anyway???)
I think y'all need to take your hands off the keyboad, drop the cover, and slowly more back away. Then y'all need to go out for a tall, cold beer and forget about this site:) And Sean, I love NIN's...especially Trent (a god) and Trent's song and video Closer. Due to its imagry and symbolism, the video is the best one ever made. I really really really really like it. And THAT'S my interpretation of this song. (What song was it anyway???)
@tigerx2374 pretentious teen? fuck off you sound like my parents. I have had enough experience in my lifetime to at least be overpretentious. @seanbay0120 wow that was a lot to read glad you took the time to respond. So I'm going to keep this short: lets be honest you ripped me apart - kudos since its been two years since my post I think I have matured so let me clarify the ongoing experience I get from the song. I get the feeling of a man who has lost touch with who he thought he was due to revelations. He realizes that "there...
@tigerx2374 pretentious teen? fuck off you sound like my parents. I have had enough experience in my lifetime to at least be overpretentious. @seanbay0120 wow that was a lot to read glad you took the time to respond. So I'm going to keep this short: lets be honest you ripped me apart - kudos since its been two years since my post I think I have matured so let me clarify the ongoing experience I get from the song. I get the feeling of a man who has lost touch with who he thought he was due to revelations. He realizes that "there is no you there is only me" - I took this to mean, along with the lines, "I just made you up, to hurt myself" as an imaginary friend the child created. Imaginary friends symbolize to me inner parts of our minds that we make fake realities in order to entertain/console/understand ourselves. But in the end knowing that it was all in our head and hating that. Granted I've never had an imaginary friend so I am talking out of my ass. More recently I feel the song implies a sort of conscience, a childlike conscience without the support of reality. This defined who he was but slowly he began to see himself differently until he could "see right through himself" as if he realized how fake he was and he hated it. I like your interpretation of "he is in a bizzare new state where the only thing that seems to be tangible is himself". I understand now your connection to the Matrix. Thoughts can be like computer programs and can run our lives. Getting an outside perspective saves us from this which I believe you connected nicely to the song. I don't know why I relate this song so much to coming of age probably because I am seventeen and its the only life experience I have to go off of. I used to look up to my dad as a kid even though he was rarely around and a raging alcoholic. When I reached the point in my life when I decided to step out of this mind frame and into another more bitter one of he can go fuck himself it was a major shift and I began to see things differently. I tend to remember that shift when I listen to this song.