Stephanie: I think that the relationship suggestions are due to misleading vocabulary -- 'you', 'beautiful', 'love' -- suggesting that he is talking to a lover. It's possible that 'Back from Kathmandu' means that he is returning from a distant city back to his lover, but this is rather indirect for OK Go. I mean, if you look at how they use song titles, it's often a bit of the first line of the lyrics or part of the chorus which gets reflected in the title.
I would suggest that there was a literal trip to Kathmandu which was 'like a dream' (hence the title comes directly from the repeated chorus 'in the dream it was just like it is'). This trip seems to have opened up the singer's perspective on a whole lot of topics. Kathmandu is of course the big-city capital of Nepal, and if you've never been there, visiting Nepal is sort of a bizarre time-machine experience: you return to this simpler, medieval life where people have next to nothing. When someone wants to construct a modern bridge with steel cables, human beings carry them by foot, three or four people coiling this massive heavy thing around all of them, then hiking to wherever it needs to go. Life is slow and taken as needed; the kids build their own balls out of reeds and grass because they haven't got anything else to ply with. It looks like many of the verses talk quite a bit about Buddhism.
If that is the organizing metaphor, then here's what these verses mean:
"In the dream you were someone different, you and everyone else all at once. You were beautiful, you were beautiful: in the dream you were just like you are."
I think this refers to the raw beauty of authenticity -- everyone acted 'as they truly are' in Nepal, and this was beautiful.
"You loved everyone like a sovereign -- half magnanimous, half unimpressed. And I was talking too much; I was trying too hard: in the dream it was just like it is."
I think this refers to the Buddhist faith in particular, which focuses on having a compassion for other living beings, eliminating striving, meditating in silence. Buddhist love isn't this romantic ideal, but it's about caring deeply for people with this base compassion. So he's commenting on how he feels utterly struck by inferior, because he talks too much, he tries to be something he's not, and here he sees how we actually are, how to be compassionate to other living beings.
"Everything was so simple: things are how they always will be. You are the answer to the question that is me: in the dream it was just like it is."
I think this is the 'time-travelling' experience of Nepal, and identifying a yearning to go back there, that he has found out something profound about his own potential while there. But it might also be emphasizing some less-Buddhist transcendental belief: fatalism and the some feeling of finding yourself in others.
"We were captive in, in a prison, where everyone was guilty by mistake. And it was infinite, it was infinite: In the dream it was just like it is."
I think this builds on the Buddhism theme -- the prison is one of trying too hard, of being too attached, and everyone is born to this by mistake in Buddhism. The temptation to get attached to things becomes infinitely consuming, or so. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a very apt description of what's called 'samsara', the cycle of tedium, attachment, and suffering, which Buddhism says you must reject in order to gain enlightenment.
"And I asked if love could free us, you said, 'no, probably not -- but everybody needs to get through the night, and love is all we got.' In the dream it was just like it is."
I think this is a question that he actually asked a Buddhist monk, and a summary of the response, because it certainly sounds like it. If it's so important to be compassionate, does that mean that love frees us from attachment and samsara and struggle? No, probably not: love is another attachment, as risky as the other ones, and if you get stuck in love you can end up similarly needy and suffering because of it, just as with any other addiction. But, it's still important, because compassion is crucial to living a good life: it's the only resource we have for getting through the day.
Stephanie: I think that the relationship suggestions are due to misleading vocabulary -- 'you', 'beautiful', 'love' -- suggesting that he is talking to a lover. It's possible that 'Back from Kathmandu' means that he is returning from a distant city back to his lover, but this is rather indirect for OK Go. I mean, if you look at how they use song titles, it's often a bit of the first line of the lyrics or part of the chorus which gets reflected in the title.
I would suggest that there was a literal trip to Kathmandu which was 'like a dream' (hence the title comes directly from the repeated chorus 'in the dream it was just like it is'). This trip seems to have opened up the singer's perspective on a whole lot of topics. Kathmandu is of course the big-city capital of Nepal, and if you've never been there, visiting Nepal is sort of a bizarre time-machine experience: you return to this simpler, medieval life where people have next to nothing. When someone wants to construct a modern bridge with steel cables, human beings carry them by foot, three or four people coiling this massive heavy thing around all of them, then hiking to wherever it needs to go. Life is slow and taken as needed; the kids build their own balls out of reeds and grass because they haven't got anything else to ply with. It looks like many of the verses talk quite a bit about Buddhism.
If that is the organizing metaphor, then here's what these verses mean:
I think this refers to the raw beauty of authenticity -- everyone acted 'as they truly are' in Nepal, and this was beautiful.
I think this refers to the Buddhist faith in particular, which focuses on having a compassion for other living beings, eliminating striving, meditating in silence. Buddhist love isn't this romantic ideal, but it's about caring deeply for people with this base compassion. So he's commenting on how he feels utterly struck by inferior, because he talks too much, he tries to be something he's not, and here he sees how we actually are, how to be compassionate to other living beings.
I think this is the 'time-travelling' experience of Nepal, and identifying a yearning to go back there, that he has found out something profound about his own potential while there. But it might also be emphasizing some less-Buddhist transcendental belief: fatalism and the some feeling of finding yourself in others.
I think this builds on the Buddhism theme -- the prison is one of trying too hard, of being too attached, and everyone is born to this by mistake in Buddhism. The temptation to get attached to things becomes infinitely consuming, or so. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a very apt description of what's called 'samsara', the cycle of tedium, attachment, and suffering, which Buddhism says you must reject in order to gain enlightenment.
I think this is a question that he actually asked a Buddhist monk, and a summary of the response, because it certainly sounds like it. If it's so important to be compassionate, does that mean that love frees us from attachment and samsara and struggle? No, probably not: love is another attachment, as risky as the other ones, and if you get stuck in love you can end up similarly needy and suffering because of it, just as with any other addiction. But, it's still important, because compassion is crucial to living a good life: it's the only resource we have for getting through the day.