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Break me in, teach us to cheat
And to lie, cover up
What shouldn't be shared
All the truth's unwinding
Scraping away at my mind
Please stop asking me to describe
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
Self expressed, exhausting for all
To see and to be
What you want and what you need
The truth's unwinding
Scraping away at my mind
Please stop asking me to describe
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
Wash me away
Clean your body of me
Erase all the memories
They will only bring us pain
And I've seen, all I'll ever need
And to lie, cover up
What shouldn't be shared
All the truth's unwinding
Scraping away at my mind
Please stop asking me to describe
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
Self expressed, exhausting for all
To see and to be
What you want and what you need
The truth's unwinding
Scraping away at my mind
Please stop asking me to describe
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
With no feelings at all
Open minded
I'm sure I used to be so free
Wash me away
Clean your body of me
Erase all the memories
They will only bring us pain
And I've seen, all I'll ever need
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"It's an expression of what it feels like to be questioned. I spend more time than most people being asked about purpose, and it's a strange feeling. I don't really have the answers and I have to respond on the knowledge I have obtained so far, but the problem is that it gets printed, and something else has come along that's made you completely disagree with what you said".[1]
the second part is when the lie have been uncovered and how our character reacts toward the affected person.
just my 2 cents at the moment. Though i often interpret the song in different ways depending on my mood.
About the rape interpretation; i might hold some truth, but it is just an annoying meaning for all of us who have not been affected by rape.
Probably my favourite muse song.
The first line, "break me in", I think of as how the media is trying to break into him and find out everything about him.
"teach us to cheat and to lie, cover up what shouldn't be shared?" To lie and cover up what shouldn't be shared, in my opinion, means to start lying about somethings about you to maybe an interviewer or someone because you never know what people will think if you say the truth. To cover up what shouldn't be shared is like how a celebrity always has to cover up for something they did wrong and he feels like he has to do that.
"all the truth's unwinding, scraping away at my mind" He feels this way as the public starts to find out more about him that he doesn't want them to know.
"please stop asking me to describe" Interviewers, paparazzi, fans, etc. always want to know every little detail about a celebrity and he just wants it all to stop. They want him to describe why he think differently to other people.
"for one moment I wish you'd hold your stage with no feelings at all" I feel like this line is directed to all the people that judge him because he thinks differently.
"open minded. I'm sure I used to be so free." This line makes me think that he wishes people were more open minded about his thoughts. Or by open minded, he wishes he could be opened minded and free like he used to be before people started judging him for being different. And now that people are acting this way to him, he feels like he's not allowed to be open minded about everything.
"self-expressed, exhausting for all to see and to be" Here he is exhausting for everyone to understand his self-expression. He wants people to get an idea of what he sees instead of being so judgmental and not giving his thoughts a chance because they think he's crazy. They want him to be more mainstream and not so self-expressed.
"wash me away, clean your body of me" I feel like this is what he thinks other people want. It's hard for me to explain. I feel he thinks people want him washed out of them, as in they don't want all they've heard from Matt to be in their life. They don't want his ideas to be stuck in their minds because they don't like it.
"erase all the memories, they will only bring us pain and i've seen, all i'll ever need" This line is the same as the one before. He thinks people want all the memories of Matt's crazy and different thoughts erased from their memories because some of them may scare most of the public and bring them pain because it's different from what they have always thought. He probably thinks the public has seen enough of him and that's all they'll need from him.
Yea, so that's what I thought about the meaning of the song, but I think the rape idea may also be the meaning. Tell me what you think of my idea. :)
The really loud harmonic part at the very beginning of the song symbolize the electric shocks going into Winston's body when Obrien is brain washing him.
Break me in teach us to cheat
and to lie, cover up
what shouldnt be shared
The first sentence of the song communicates Winston's want to be a "normal" citizen of Oceania and him giving into O'Briens will. He wants to be broken in, he wants to believe the Inner Party's lies but can't because he knows it's not the truth. He wants O'Brien to brainwash him. He wants to be normal.
and the truths unwinding
scraping away
at my mind
This describes what is happenening to the truth in Winston's mind. It's "unwinding" with each electric shock by O'brien. In Winston's mind truth is becoming relative instead of what it really is, absolute. In 1984 truth is what is commonly accepted by the masses and propogated by the inner party, so real Truth is never known. Absolute truth is being erased from Winston's mind and being replaced with "truth" given to him by O'brien.
Please stop asking
me to describe
This is Winston's inability to describe the concept of absolute truth to O'Brien after undergoing the electrical shocks and the torment his inability brings him.
For one moment
I wish you'd hold your stage
with no feelings at all
Openminded
I'm sure i used to be so free...
This is Winston talking to himself in a moment of resistance to O'Brien. He wishes he could hold his own, be openminded andhave freedom over his own mind.
Wash me away
Clean your body of me
Erase all the memories
They'll only bring us pain
and ive seen all I'll ever need.
This is Winston dialogue with Julia after his brainwashing. The lyrics pretty much explain everything.
The song is indeed a compressed story about brainwashing and self-policing in modern politcally correct society, and Matt Bellamy often underlines how closely our modern reality mirrors the dystopian fiction of the previous generations (of which 1984 is the most famous but Frederick Forsythe's hi-tech spy thrillers and of course the seminal sci-fi movie Metropolis are examples).
I'll look out for more insights from you.