I have come to interpret this song as being about what I am choosing to call mental masturbation. Another way of putting this is the pursuit of knowledge as a means to becoming fulfilled, and the song highlights both the futility of this and its necessary place in the natural progression of things.
[I'm going stanza by stanza here]
The intro creates an association between the song's namesake (which means "what a drag!") with intellectuals.
The next bit describes such an intellectual with some pretty powerful imagery, like someone who has been thinking (scratching their beard) so much that they have become exhausted (their chin has been rubbed off!), and equating the brutal friction of sharpening an ax to 'brushing up' on some of the oldest syntax's (as though its that simple) makes our model intellectual into a self-parody.
The next part shows the implications of such perpetuating inquiry, illustrated as a waxing and waning axis where you are nothing but a small gear that must serve your societal function of procreating and paying taxes to keep the machine running.
This next stanza is the most abstract, as it introduces some neurological references. The meaning of the numbers may be interpreted many different ways, but I think Bird was simply using them as arbitrary poetic sounding figures that make it seem like he's spelling out some equation, and he can do this without having to back it up ("...get[ting] away with murder..." as Bird himself has put it) because of the elasticity of the heavens. This elasticity image also reminds me how malleable the substance of imagination is. "Those who live and die..." self explanatory if you've been following along my opinion.
The rest of the lines before the repeating stanza are used to further paint the picture of click compulsive thinking, click uneasiness, tic and the harrowing products of scientific advancement.
I'd like to know that the move from astronomy to numerology produces a historical timeline of human inquiry within the song, to follow up on the origins of language which introduce the song. If there were an order to fields of study, communication then looking to the heavens then counting things seems logical.
I have come to interpret this song as being about what I am choosing to call mental masturbation. Another way of putting this is the pursuit of knowledge as a means to becoming fulfilled, and the song highlights both the futility of this and its necessary place in the natural progression of things.
[I'm going stanza by stanza here] The intro creates an association between the song's namesake (which means "what a drag!") with intellectuals.
The next bit describes such an intellectual with some pretty powerful imagery, like someone who has been thinking (scratching their beard) so much that they have become exhausted (their chin has been rubbed off!), and equating the brutal friction of sharpening an ax to 'brushing up' on some of the oldest syntax's (as though its that simple) makes our model intellectual into a self-parody.
The next part shows the implications of such perpetuating inquiry, illustrated as a waxing and waning axis where you are nothing but a small gear that must serve your societal function of procreating and paying taxes to keep the machine running.
This next stanza is the most abstract, as it introduces some neurological references. The meaning of the numbers may be interpreted many different ways, but I think Bird was simply using them as arbitrary poetic sounding figures that make it seem like he's spelling out some equation, and he can do this without having to back it up ("...get[ting] away with murder..." as Bird himself has put it) because of the elasticity of the heavens. This elasticity image also reminds me how malleable the substance of imagination is. "Those who live and die..." self explanatory if you've been following along my opinion.
The rest of the lines before the repeating stanza are used to further paint the picture of click compulsive thinking, click uneasiness, tic and the harrowing products of scientific advancement.
I'd like to know that the move from astronomy to numerology produces a historical timeline of human inquiry within the song, to follow up on the origins of language which introduce the song. If there were an order to fields of study, communication then looking to the heavens then counting things seems logical.