This is actually my favorite song. I really mean it. Like, favorite song of all time....
There is just something mysteriously beautiful in some of the prose, like panning for ore with this person on the desert floor, admitting to them " that I could never imagine a place so beautiful; I could never steal your gold away."
I absolutely love that line. As if he has found someone he loves but he is both so grateful for and self deprecating, that it's not his place to pursue a love so grand.
Aside from the entire 'selfless love' theme going on in this song, I'm particularly drawn to the line "I looked for you, it's my last grand stand. A motor scooter goat-legged Pan. Figure-eighting in quicksand."
Like no matter how hard to tries to "divine" or connect his love to this person, they have him completely awestruck and there's really no way he can find to do it, but he loves them anyways, with nothing in return.
**
In the live version, there's a break in the song when it goes to instrumentals where Stipe says the words, "I look at you, but you look right through me. What's a man to do? What's a man to say?"
Also, at the end of the song in the live version the last line (completely,) is:
And with my hands tied I won't crack
'Cause in my mind I called you back
This is actually my favorite song. I really mean it. Like, favorite song of all time....
There is just something mysteriously beautiful in some of the prose, like panning for ore with this person on the desert floor, admitting to them " that I could never imagine a place so beautiful; I could never steal your gold away."
I absolutely love that line. As if he has found someone he loves but he is both so grateful for and self deprecating, that it's not his place to pursue a love so grand.
Aside from the entire 'selfless love' theme going on in this song, I'm particularly drawn to the line "I looked for you, it's my last grand stand. A motor scooter goat-legged Pan. Figure-eighting in quicksand."
Like no matter how hard to tries to "divine" or connect his love to this person, they have him completely awestruck and there's really no way he can find to do it, but he loves them anyways, with nothing in return.
** In the live version, there's a break in the song when it goes to instrumentals where Stipe says the words, "I look at you, but you look right through me. What's a man to do? What's a man to say?"
Also, at the end of the song in the live version the last line (completely,) is:
And with my hands tied I won't crack 'Cause in my mind I called you back
Just fyi.