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Rag weed tall better hope that his ladder don't crack
Or he'll hit the ground low, hard and out of his back
At the battle at the bottom of the ocean, well the dead
Do rise
You need proof I got proof at the surface you can watch
'Em float by
Way in back of the room, there sits a cage
Inside it's a clock that you can win if you can guess its age
Which you never can do 'cause the time it constantly changes
For luck or lack
I guess that is the saying
On the first page of the book of blue it read
"If you read this page, than that'll be your death"
By then it was too late
And you wound up on an island of shells and bones that
Bodies had left
And the one thing you taught me
'bout human beings was this
They ain't made of nothin' but water and shit
Or he'll hit the ground low, hard and out of his back
At the battle at the bottom of the ocean, well the dead
Do rise
You need proof I got proof at the surface you can watch
'Em float by
Way in back of the room, there sits a cage
Inside it's a clock that you can win if you can guess its age
Which you never can do 'cause the time it constantly changes
For luck or lack
I guess that is the saying
On the first page of the book of blue it read
"If you read this page, than that'll be your death"
By then it was too late
And you wound up on an island of shells and bones that
Bodies had left
And the one thing you taught me
'bout human beings was this
They ain't made of nothin' but water and shit
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'If you read this page, than that'll be your death'
By then it was too late"
The book of blue is the rules of living on Earth: once you are born (open the book and read the page) then you're bound to the rules (that you'll one day die).
"And you wound up on an island of shells and bones that bodies had left"
This is not a metaphor at all. Land is dirt and rocks, which are from dead organic matter from millions of years ago. We are all bound to an island of the old shells and bones of all living things.
"And the one thing you taught me 'bout human beings was this
They ain't made of nothin' but water and shit"
Again, this is not a metaphor. Literally, what is all life made of? We are essentially just matter recycled from what's already here. The land is literally made of the excrement of bugs and worms that have processed the mass of things once living.
Of course, when it's screamed out and with Issac Brock's attitude, this final sentence manages to be both empathetic to our biological-determinist earth-bound nature, and also scathingly harsh and pissed. Genius.
Ragweed tall
Better hope that his ladder don't crack
-
ragweed's scientific name is ambrosia, the nectar of the gods. it confers immortality, so if you are "ragweed-tall" then you're old. your ladder is your spine, which is the center of vital essence.
--
Or he'll hit the ground low
Hard and under his back
-
your vital essence cracks, and you hit the ground under your back, which would imply that your soul falls out of your body
--
At the battle at the bottom of the ocean
Well, the dead do rise
You need proof, I got proof at the surface
You can watch them float by
-
I think the battle at the bottom of the ocean is life, with all its turmoil. if you go up to the surface, through transcendental experience--whether drug-induced or the result of spiritual practice--you can see that the dead aren't just rotting away.
--
Way in back of the room, there sits a cage
Inside is a clock that you can win
If you can guess its age
Which you never can do
Because the time it constantly changes
For luck or lack, I guess that is the saying
-
this is about the urge to figure out mortality. the room is our self, and the clock is our heart in our ribcage. the struggle against our mortality is the hope that if we can figure out the true nature of life, we can beat the system. age is something transitory, and you can't speak an exact universal age without the age changing before you're done speaking.
--
On the first page of the book of blue it read
"If you read this page, then that'll be your death"
-
the book of blue is life, and you see the first page the first time you see the sky, ie, when you are born.
--
By then it was too late
And you wound up on an island of shells and bones
That bodies had left
-
you can't be unborn. we live on an island of bones. dirt is dead animals and dead plants.
--
And the one thing you taught me
About human beings was this:
They ain't made of nothing but water and shit
-
this is similar to the Buddhist thing of referring the human body as a sack of shit. the body is transitory, and everything else in the song refers to what is real.
----
There you have it. Go forth. Be fruitful and multiply. :)
"Well let's take this potted plant to the woods and set it free
I'm gonna tell the owners just how nice that was of me"
against this:
"By then it was too late
And you wound up on an island of shells and bones"
I think that This Devil's Workday is kind of a prequel to this. The narrator of this song is kind of a narcissist, while that of TDW becomes one in the end.
Rag weed tall better hope that his ladder don't crack.
Or he'll hit the ground hard and out of his back.
He's on this ladder that he's used to elevate himself and if it cracks he'll fall all the way down to where everyone else is and he'll have a lot of reality to deal with.
------------------------------------------------------------
At the battle at the bottom of the ocean, well the dead do rise.
Resurection is what takes takes the sting (or fear) of death out of the minds of Christians. Isaac is creating the little fantasy battle at the bottom of the ocean and when the people in the battle (Christians and the like) die they start to rise or float up.
------------------------------------------------------------
You need proof I got proof, at the surface you can watch them float by.
The people (Christians or whoever believes in God and life after death and all that) that were "risen from the dead" float up to the surface and that's where you can see the bodies floating around. The line is layered with sarcasm because the people are still dead. Their dead bodies are just floating around on the surface of the water for all to see, and that's all the Isaac makes of people rising from the dead.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Way in the back of the room there sits a cage. Inside it's a clock that you can win if you can guess its age.
The clock in the back of the room is like the timeline of the world's age or whatever. It is in a cage because you can't get to the clock to stop the time or rewind it or fast forward it. If you can guess how old the clock is you can figure everything about God or evolution or whatever out.
---------------------------------------------------------
Which you never can do 'cos the time it constantly changes. For lack or luck I guess that is the saying.
You can't figure out the clock's age because time is always in progress. I have no idea about the lack or luck part. It seems to come across as more of an abstract feeling than an actual meaning.
-----------------------------------------------------------
On the first page of the book of blue it read: "If you read this page then that'll be your death."
I think the book of blue is the bible. Or some authoritative religious holy book (I heard the Book of Mormon was sometimes refered to as the book of blue). If you continue reading the book and believe it then you'll die, at least in your mind or brain...something like that.
-------------------------------------------------------
By then it was too late and you wound up on an island of shells and bones that bodies had left.
After you read the first page it's too late and you're stuck on this island that leads to nowhere. The shells and bones that bodies had left part I guess refers to the previous people who read the book and believed it.
---------------------------------------------------------
And the one thing you taught me about human beings was this: They ain't made of nothing but water and shit!
First of all, this is simply beautiful. I think the "you" in this line might be the person who read the book of blue, believes in religion and all that. They taught him that humans ain't made of nothing but...
Anyway, that's what I think. Any takers?
The last lines of the song are even better when you think of the song in that way though. Religion attempts to explain all of these profound ideas and the meaning of life itself, but in the end all it does is show us that people are nothing but water and shit. Almost every religion demands that we worship some egomaniacal god. And everyday people were the ones who made it all up. They are literally full of shit.
It's not like a clock in a cage is new, where else have we seen clocks in cages? A lot of institutions have them, such as schools, and prisons, makes sure they don't get broke. Time is fragile, yeah. But why are you guessing it's age? What do you have to win? Well, if it goes with the idea of an institution, timings everything. You leave now, you move now, this is when you start, this is when you end. But this clock has no appointments, or endings, you win, you die. But you never know when you're going to die, so guessing is useless, but for some forsaken reason you're still trying to win. It's in the back of the room, so that could very well say it's not as important as you're making it seem, there's the rest of the room to look forward to. Just live and fuck the clock, you don't always need to win.
hmm, although Brock probably thinks differently. Haha, maybe he never even thought at all.
Well, the dead do rise
You need proof, I got proof at the surface
You can watch them float by' because of the ressurection belief.
THEY! AIN'T! MADE! OF! NOTHING! BUT! WATER! AND! SHIT!
;)