8.5 Minutes

This song is about the Sun exhausting its nuclear fuel, ending its life and the reaction of Earth's inhabitants to this result. In the first part, the Earth's nukes are launched at the Sun to try to restart the nuclear burning process. Some hit the Moon by mistake on the way. The 8.5 minutes refers to the transit time for the light from the Sun to the Earth. The main recurring theme in this song has to do with what the Earthlings would do during the final 8.5 minutes of that last beam of sunlight coming to the Earth - the last time we'd have light. The astronomer is on CNN because they are asking him about the Sun burning out and what we're going to do? will life continue with the ensuing ice age we are about to embark on? It is now realize that everyone is going to die as the power plants are shutting down and the world is basically fucked. The author presents his case as someone who has found peace in the whole horrible mess - he is in the 5th stage of the Kübler-Ross model: acceptance. He finds beauty in the terribleness, e.g. "And a dead black disk slides silently overhead It’s fucking beautiful is what it is, " which again proves that he is saying that the Sun has burnt out. The end is pretty self-explanatory....

Actually, that is not "enough said." It's about what people would do if the world ended. Would they loot, and do things they could never get away with, or would they realize that they're sorry for all the crappy stuff they've done in their lives.

I love the line about the astronomer on CNN: "I'm not your fucking clergyman"

To explain, the panic spreading through the populace has reached a climax and everyone wants answers. How long do we have? Will the Earth be destroyed? What's going on? And there is this scientist who is just a simple astronomy researcher and all these questions are bombarding him on live T.V. and he screams that he isn't a clergyman, meaning he isn't going to give people peace about death or give them all the answers they need or help them reconcile their behavior. And that is just two lines of this great piece, one word: mind-blowing.

the nukes were launched because the sun died: "kickstart something", with the heat and the energy of nuclear power. He's not a scientist, he's a musician; whether 8.5 minutes is or isn't an accurate figure is entirely irrelevant. Further proof: "On the other hand, oh, it's fucking freezing..." -- no sun? exactly. Travis certainly has a way with words, it's true.

I agree with WhiteTide, about the sun being out and trying to kick start it. I'd say the 8.5 minutes was the time between the sun actually going out and the time before the last of it's light hit the earth. The last 8.5 minutes of life as you know it. The verses talk about the aftermath, and the chorus goes back to how people reacted during the event.

Awesome song and good job interpreting it. I love the lines: "But the sky is like a dome of black metal flake And stars bleed together in phosphorescent lakes And a dead black disk slides silently overhead It's fucking beautiful is what it is." No sun means no moonlight, plus no electricity on earth, the sky would look like black metal flake (which is what makes paint metallic or "sparkly", a good example is this-- 2.bp.blogspot.com/_i_AovfzNXgQ/SI_1lbqjB7I/AAAAAAAAUs8/0A773-96ewI/s400/IMG_6445.jpg). The stars would be so numerous, they would just blend together in lakes of light. And the "dead black disk" being the only other thing in the sky: the unilluminated moon, only appearing as a black disc in the sky. It really would be beautiful if you picture it. Great imagery in this song.

Seems like people have more or less covered the technical aspects of the metaphor at the center of this song, but there's been less discussion about the thrust of the metaphor itself.

That shows itself in the song's motivating question: "What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?" In other words, what really drives you when you strip away everything superficial and transient? (That stripping away is accomplished in an extreme and evocative fashion here, which understandably diverts attention from the message.)

The song presents the question both on the collective and the individual level. The narrator observes things like the lack of looting, but also tempers that observation by the fact that potential looters might be deterred by the cold. You can hear him wrestling with the question of how the human race is going to behave in the face of existential crisis. Is it fundamentally self-destructive or can it muster the fortitude to "get it right" while staring down extinction?

We also get the individual question: when the chips are down, how are you going to react? Is your impulse to try to get in your spiteful parting shots on the people around you, or do you square yourself with your conscience by attempting to right any wrongs you've committed against them?

It's a song that struggles with the contradiction of the human impulse for great empathy and altruism along side it's equally capacious selfish side. It wonders, ultimately, which side wins out, both within individuals, and within society writ large.

About the end of the world, 'nuff said.

gives a lot of images of the end of the world, but what is this "Dead black disc" that slides silently overhead?

I think he may be making a reference to the giant saucers in the movie Independence Day... at least that's what I picture when I think of "dead black disk slides silently overhead."

I agree with bizarre. This song asks what a person does when there are only 8.5 minutes left for humanity... loot, pillage, and rape or apologize and express love.