| Bob Dylan – It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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@[jms11733:4560] I take the meaning of each line to concurrent with the meaning of the stanza it belongs to. In this case, the whole stanza is: "While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked" This whole song reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote that is as follows: "He has all the virtues I don't like and the vices I don't admire". This quote, I believe, is in response to somebody Churchill does not particularly likes, but respects. In Dylan's case, he respects life, but is struggling with how to find proper perspective when it appears that there is no answer to the question of context in life. Consider Churchill to be somebody who agrees with this, but has a firm standing with his personal perspective, and thus does not worry himself as much with the innate confusion of life. I believe the struggle found in this stanza, as this song is undoubtedly about struggling, is that of perspective again. Dylan struggles with preachers despite perhaps not necessarily disagreeing with them, but rather disagreeing with their methods because they are cynical and negative. He also disagrees with the methods of teachers, because knowledge is not something you wait for, but pursue as he is doing, and even so, if somebody is successful with pursuing education, and then afterwards in life with landing a good job due to good education, then they are waiting a life time just for some money and sarcastically "hundred-dollar plates". Also, because somebody is now well off due to education and money, they are generally impervious to criticism, and have the power to sway opinion and context. People with money define context, and thus "goodness". The sarcasm behind this message, is that even the most powerful person in the Universe, the president of the United States, must have to stand naked sometimes like the rest of us. Why bother with such a struggle when all the things in life people hold so valuable are as thinly veiled as paper, and as easy to flip as being stripped of your clothes. Like I said, I believe Dylan struggles with context of meaning in the many perspectives he sees in the world, and this song is a very serious, as well as sometimes a derisively sarcastic and humorous account of his inability to label anything the same way other people do, and just how hard it is to change the enormous pile of crap that is the public opinion. |
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| Bob Dylan – It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"An' though the rules of the road have been lodged It's only people's games that you got to dodge And it's alright, Ma, I can make it." To me, this is the centerpiece of the song, that the rest of the lyrics, or thoughts, are trying to grapple with. I read this as highly sarcastic, yet brutally honest. I think he is saying that the "lodged", or unchangeable, rules of the road are that it's just a system of games. And if it is just a system of games, then it is just people's game's that you have to dodge in order to "make it" on your own. But at the same time, if that's all there is, then that too is a game, and nothing seems to make sense anymore. This realization takes away some fervor from life, and leaves him sighing, instead of enthusiastic. He no longer has anything to "live up to". It's okay if he "can't please" those he loves because they are all in their own vaults, though decidedly less "free" than the vault he finds himself in. At this point, all is "phony", and he is beginning to get "lonely". The only thing he can do with meaning is to find more games to analyze; "what else can you show me?" But that is just it, "it's life and life only". What is he to do? At this point, he's just another person busy dying, and if all he knows he can understand is a circle of games, then he might as well enjoy the one's built upon the knowledge he's just figured out, and not become a man "bent out of shape" under a structure. Take from the outside that which reflects this knowledge, and produce your own culture and games from, and let the rest be what it will. "It's Alright, Ma. I'm only bleeding." He's instructing his mother to not overreact because he is not dying (even though he technically is). But that life involves pain, and it's what we do with it that matters. Dylan is a genius lyricist. |
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| Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Imo, this song is about someone who was going along with the flow of life not questioning much. A person who believes everything politics and the media sells him, and then one day realizes that he has yet to ever experience any of the joy and happiness seemingly promised to him, and after years of just going along with things waiting for fulfillment, he feels empty. His life flashes before his eyes, and he can't figure out why he hasn't succeeded in making himself happy. He can't come to any reasonable solution because he has been so successfully manipulated, and thus (because of his skewed beliefs) tries to fight it off as just simple depression and attempts to convince himself that he is a reasonable man, and that he should be feeling better. I think the song title alludes to this idea considering the interpretation revolves around the concept of conformity, and that conformity is perpetuated by the packed, uniformed, and claustrophobia world that brings many people to this state of complete inability to reason oneself to actual reason, even after your original reason has done you no good. It's too hard to escape, we are all packt like sardines in a crushed tin box. | |
| Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #2 (Laika) Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| This is spot on | |
| TV on the Radio – DLZ Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Exactly what I was going to say |
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| Radiohead – Videotape Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This story ties into Goethe's Faust nicely IMO. Faust is searching for happiness his whole life, and resorts to selling his sole to the devil (Mephistopheles) if the devil can lead him to happiness. Happiness only truly comes, however, when he dies and realizes just how beautiful life actually was. His sole is pardoned and sent to heaven due to the fact he tried so hard to find the happiness he desired. The story ends there, but as he dies and slips into the unknown (I picture this is how Thom see's it) you can imagine that he, for the first time, was not worried at all about what the future had in store because he had no control over his future. He had only his last moments in his present state of human existence in which his life flashed before his eyes and he realized just how beautiful his life and everything in it was. Today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen. | |
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