I have to say I was a bit surprised to not see any interpretations similar to my own on the symbolism of the swimming pool. To me, the most important motifs in the lyrics are time (especially in terms of the transition from adolescence to adulthood) and water, which pops up in a few different contexts.
I think the song is about two childhood friends that only realize their romantic feelings for each other later in life, after having been in relationships with other people. The swimming pool has a double meaning. First, it represents the nostalgia of the friends' childhood days spent running through the woods, swimming/skipping or throwing rocks in lakes, finding abandoned houses or shacks to call their own secret spot, and just being innocent kids discovering life together. Second,it describes what we continually return to after failed relationships, the pool of potential romantic interests, all the OTHER fish in the sea if you will.
The two friends come to realize their mutual feelings for each other, but the timing is bad because the girl is already involved with someone else. The narrator kisses her anyway, complicating things for both of them. The girl's boyfriend knows that something is wrong because of the "new eyes" she has for her childhood friend and gets mad, loses interest in her quickly and gossips about what happened.
This presumably leaves the narrator and his friend in a place where they can be together in bliss right? But for whatever reason (the narrator is still pondering) it doesn't work out.
Possible reasons: swimming in the pool of people and sex and relationships for too long has corrupted both parties' sense of trust and longevity as a long term possibility, leading to paranoia about the relationship that makes the narrator "need a shower" or want to just "duck out and find the swimming pool". In other words, he saw himself how easily a relationship could fall apart when he kissed his friend and made her go astray from her current interest, so why couldn't it happen again? so then why go through all this pain just to reach that result again after so much has been invested?
Do we extend ourselves romantically just because "feeling is good"? because we're driven by biological needs for companionship and sexual expression? do we compromise and "give a little" just for the sake of getting "a little bit"? and what exactly is the point if in the end it's only temporary, and we'll end up burning all the letters and notes and reminders of past lovers along with our connections to them? of course any time AC says "fry" i have to assume there's more than one meaning there haha
I am reminded of the "guy who tosses typewriter" scene from Richard Linklater's film Slacker where the pissed off ex-boyfriend quotes James Joyce's Ulysses:
"If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity."
I have to say I was a bit surprised to not see any interpretations similar to my own on the symbolism of the swimming pool. To me, the most important motifs in the lyrics are time (especially in terms of the transition from adolescence to adulthood) and water, which pops up in a few different contexts.
I think the song is about two childhood friends that only realize their romantic feelings for each other later in life, after having been in relationships with other people. The swimming pool has a double meaning. First, it represents the nostalgia of the friends' childhood days spent running through the woods, swimming/skipping or throwing rocks in lakes, finding abandoned houses or shacks to call their own secret spot, and just being innocent kids discovering life together. Second,it describes what we continually return to after failed relationships, the pool of potential romantic interests, all the OTHER fish in the sea if you will.
The two friends come to realize their mutual feelings for each other, but the timing is bad because the girl is already involved with someone else. The narrator kisses her anyway, complicating things for both of them. The girl's boyfriend knows that something is wrong because of the "new eyes" she has for her childhood friend and gets mad, loses interest in her quickly and gossips about what happened.
This presumably leaves the narrator and his friend in a place where they can be together in bliss right? But for whatever reason (the narrator is still pondering) it doesn't work out.
Possible reasons: swimming in the pool of people and sex and relationships for too long has corrupted both parties' sense of trust and longevity as a long term possibility, leading to paranoia about the relationship that makes the narrator "need a shower" or want to just "duck out and find the swimming pool". In other words, he saw himself how easily a relationship could fall apart when he kissed his friend and made her go astray from her current interest, so why couldn't it happen again? so then why go through all this pain just to reach that result again after so much has been invested?
Do we extend ourselves romantically just because "feeling is good"? because we're driven by biological needs for companionship and sexual expression? do we compromise and "give a little" just for the sake of getting "a little bit"? and what exactly is the point if in the end it's only temporary, and we'll end up burning all the letters and notes and reminders of past lovers along with our connections to them? of course any time AC says "fry" i have to assume there's more than one meaning there haha
I am reminded of the "guy who tosses typewriter" scene from Richard Linklater's film Slacker where the pissed off ex-boyfriend quotes James Joyce's Ulysses:
"If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity."