This is a song about 3 different things going on at once, hence the title!
In one sense, it's describing a simple story about meeting a schizophrenic man who has these moments of incredible clarity, while at a punk festival.
At the same time, like all Puscifer songs, it can easily be interpreted as a sexual metaphor between these 2 characters, "I had to know more, after a couple hours we settled into it, kind of found our rhythm, going back and forth between the chaos and the focus, and all of a sudden he became startled".
The 3rd layer of this song took me a while to figure out, but is incredibly profound to me at least! It's describing what Maynard sees as God, either a dream or a vision and seeing this "beautifully insane" person who "Unapologetically chooses which pieces to focus on", just as God has no direct intervention in our world but chooses based on its will. The part that made me believe this is 100% about meeting God, is the fact that the beginning of the song the speaker describes this place as just "an island of punks and goths at a festival" but yet he goes on to call it "A raging river of multicultural art families and food", which is way more than just a punk fest and describes the nature of our world beautifully.
The best part to me, is the walkman. God has his walkman on, and we can hear what he is saying, but he doesn't hear us, he only SEES us and sees our behaviors and choices. The batteries are a metaphor for sacrifice, not exactly in a Satanic way, but the simple act of asking for batteries to help this man is what caused him (God) to give Maynard enlightenment by saying the truth of our world. That we won't make any progress until 3 people can simultaneously look eachother straight in the eye. God is basically a bisexual schizophrenic man with a cowboy hat and pink pistols, who is beautifully insane, who makes no apologies in his choices, who can't hear us but wants us to hear him, and who will give us the answers we are looking for only when we prove ourselves to be good enough people to deserve these answers. Absolutely love this song, once you realize the 3 layers of this song and its connection to God, the music that kicks in at "Well, then it's fine", so good!
@M1a This is incredibly insightful. I never would have figured this out. I really love the idea of the Walkman too. God sees us and can speak to us, but isn't listening to us over the loud music. So clever.
@M1a This is incredibly insightful. I never would have figured this out. I really love the idea of the Walkman too. God sees us and can speak to us, but isn't listening to us over the loud music. So clever.
This is a song about 3 different things going on at once, hence the title!
In one sense, it's describing a simple story about meeting a schizophrenic man who has these moments of incredible clarity, while at a punk festival.
At the same time, like all Puscifer songs, it can easily be interpreted as a sexual metaphor between these 2 characters, "I had to know more, after a couple hours we settled into it, kind of found our rhythm, going back and forth between the chaos and the focus, and all of a sudden he became startled".
The 3rd layer of this song took me a while to figure out, but is incredibly profound to me at least! It's describing what Maynard sees as God, either a dream or a vision and seeing this "beautifully insane" person who "Unapologetically chooses which pieces to focus on", just as God has no direct intervention in our world but chooses based on its will. The part that made me believe this is 100% about meeting God, is the fact that the beginning of the song the speaker describes this place as just "an island of punks and goths at a festival" but yet he goes on to call it "A raging river of multicultural art families and food", which is way more than just a punk fest and describes the nature of our world beautifully.
The best part to me, is the walkman. God has his walkman on, and we can hear what he is saying, but he doesn't hear us, he only SEES us and sees our behaviors and choices. The batteries are a metaphor for sacrifice, not exactly in a Satanic way, but the simple act of asking for batteries to help this man is what caused him (God) to give Maynard enlightenment by saying the truth of our world. That we won't make any progress until 3 people can simultaneously look eachother straight in the eye. God is basically a bisexual schizophrenic man with a cowboy hat and pink pistols, who is beautifully insane, who makes no apologies in his choices, who can't hear us but wants us to hear him, and who will give us the answers we are looking for only when we prove ourselves to be good enough people to deserve these answers. Absolutely love this song, once you realize the 3 layers of this song and its connection to God, the music that kicks in at "Well, then it's fine", so good!
@M1a This is incredibly insightful. I never would have figured this out. I really love the idea of the Walkman too. God sees us and can speak to us, but isn't listening to us over the loud music. So clever.
@M1a This is incredibly insightful. I never would have figured this out. I really love the idea of the Walkman too. God sees us and can speak to us, but isn't listening to us over the loud music. So clever.