Lyrics for A Scale, a Mirror, and Those Indifferent... as interpreted by PLANES

A Scale, a Mirror, and Those Indifferent... Lyrics
Here is a scale, weigh it out
And you will find, easily
More than sufficient doubt
That these colors you see
Were picked in advance
By some careful hand
With an absolute concept of beauty
They are smeared and these blurs
Come in random order
To color the eyes of your former lovers
Hers were green like July
Except when she cried
They were red
Now I know a disease
That these doctors can’t treat
You contract it the day
You accept all you see
Is a mirror and a mirror is all it can be
A reflection of something we’re missing
And language just happened
It was never planned
And it’s inadequate to describe where I am
In the room of my house
Where the light has never been
Waiting for this day to end
And these clocks keep unwinding
And completely ignore
Everything that we hate or adore
Once the page of a calendar is turned it’s no more
So tell me, then, what was it for?
Oh, tell me, what was it for?

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skies are gray
05-24-2002

Rated 0 
It's amazing when you think about the meaning of all the elements Conor uses in this song... that's poetry at its best.

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popnoir
06-28-2002

Rated 0 
"I know a disease that these Doctors can't treat. You contract it the day you accept all you see is a mirror and mirror is all it can be." That line is brilliant! It is like people usually look into themselves to understand themselves...but sometimes you look and you understand nothing.

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NickDogg
08-02-2002

Rated 0 
Or, maybe, accepting the world as viewed by yourself is limiting it to what you see. Like any image is distorted when viewed through a mirror, our own conceptions of the world are distorted when we only accept our own as truth.

Also, why is it that Conor can mix-and-match themes in his songs? It works so well, somehow. But, I can't see anyone else working it so well... another testament to his brilliance, I suppose.

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faye
08-21-2002

Rated 0 
very few songs make me cry. i can think of three that are from bright eyes, and this is one of them.

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Alone_is_me
10-12-2002

Rated 0 
This was the very first song that I heard from bright eyes, the one that actually got me into them. It's one of those songs you can never get sick of.

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fuk3r
03-04-2003

Rated +1 
this was the first song i heard by bright eyes as well...its clear to me though that its an atheistic song...maybe the green eyed girl disagreed with him about the existence of a god?

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ItsAlwayzGoodBye
03-21-2003

Rated 0 
its just an amazing song...

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thefuneralhadbegun
05-05-2003

Rated 0 
And these clocks keep unwinding and completely ignore
everything that we hate or adore. Once the page of a calendar is turned it’s no more. So tell me
then, what was it for? Oh tell me, what was it for?

thats gorgeous

what is it all for

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Sweet*Sadness
06-07-2003

Rated 0 
"and language just happened
it was never planned
and it's inadequate to describe where i am"

this is so true... but Conor seems to always avoid this problem - his words speak in a way that no other's can

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BrightEyedNightmare
06-12-2003

Rated 0 
<3

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dorareever
04-16-2004

Rated 0 
I think this one it's close to perfection. No one wasted line. it's like fucking Baudelaire's Spleens or something.

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ryang11r0y
04-17-2004

Rated 0 
A Clock: Time in life
A Mirror: self examination
A Scale: how to wiegh things out in life. I think he's using the followin three repeated in imagery and such He's an amazing person I rank him deemed lyrical genius.. I guess you can call him a writer who has his own standards and lives up to them and above every single DAMN time.. :'( damn he's good.

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a subtle allegory
04-18-2004

Rated 0 
this song has always seemed to be able rape to me.

now I know a disease that these doctors can’t treat.
um, rape.

the rest of the song kind of fits into the grooves, if you let it.

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dorareever
04-20-2004

Rated 0 
First verse is surely about the idea of god and the doubts Conor has about his existance (God's I mean, not his own existance...though that would be pretty Conor-ish in a way...;)).
disease doctors can't treat: self-awereness that leads to depression (not depression in itself, doctors can treat that most of the times). Self-awareness that at his worst becomes self-absorbtion (You contract it the day you accept all you see is a mirror and a mirror is all it
can be)
The rest is about the passing of time of course.

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pictorialpyro
05-13-2004

Rated 0 
This whole album reminds me of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in that it is all tied together and has an "epic" feel.
This song, in particular, reminds me of "Nobody Home". Where it has an introspective view of things while also communicating feelings everyone can relate to.

"Once the page of a calendar is turned it's no more. So tell me then what was it for?"

A rhetorical question only a person can answer for themselves. Brilliant way to end a song.
This was the first Bright Eyes song I had ever heard and this album has only left my playlist for "Lifted..". If I could have only one album to listen to ever agin then this is it.

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lifesnostorybook
06-24-2004

Rated 0 
Brilliant. I'm telling you-Conor is a genius. Infact, this song just started playing, lol, Bright Eyes is my life. Anyways, this song is very true. Here is my interpretation, although I am always open for new ideas. The beginning, the weighing of the scale part, would be like trying to understand life, and the part about the colors would be pointing out how life has no meaning behind it. The part about the disease is depression, self loathing, etc. The clock part is saying that our lives keep going despite the fact that we might not want them too, and the calendar part is suggesting that when we die its not going to matter that we were alive, so why are we here in the first place? Yeah, thats how I see it. Lurvely time.

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barnacles
09-29-2004

Rated 0 
i dont know what this song means but i just have to post this on here to support bright eyes because i have that much respect for him.

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haphazard_wings
10-31-2004

Rated 0 
This song flows so perfectly; it's symbolism makes it personal to almost anybody. Conor Oberst always manages to capture human emotion poetically and put it in his songs. I really love Bright Eyes, because unlike some "emo" bands his songs are actually straight from the heart.

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marli
11-14-2004

Rated 0 
"a mirror is all it can be. A reflection of something we’re missing."

All of the pain I feel during this song is because that line is so true. There's something missing and he nails every single aspect of what that something is with this song.

The last line referring to the calendar is the most poingant line for me. We live our lives according to a set routine. Even if we were to look past our daily rituals... High School-College-Job-Die... there must be more than that. The saddest part is- we know it and we still don't do anything about it.

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scarletdawn
12-18-2004

Rated 0 
once again: "Once the page of a calendar is turned, it's no more. So tell me, then, what was it for?"
i never ever thought of that until i heard this song. what the hell is it for? whats the point of doing stuff, saying stuff, living at all if once it's done it's gone? i can't answer that....but it really really really reallly makes you think.

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fightingmediocrity
01-23-2005

Rated 0 
A big attraction for Bright Eyes' songs for me is the atheism. What he has written, I have thought before. I'd imagine that could be true for a lot of people. An uncompromising atheist, Conor is the backup I look for when I am debating the pointlessness of it all.

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DinoSwords
01-30-2005

Rated 0 
I remember the day I came home with this CD and stuck it in my CD player and sat in a hallway with it on...and everyone was just doing their usual busy body works. I was impatient at that point in life but, for some reason I listened to the intro...and once it got past the dialouge and that slow , slow tune came on everyone in my view became ambient I could see their mouths moving and hear slight mummbles but , the bodies moved like blurs. I stared at the door and the intro carried into this song and I knew my life was changing. ( for other reasons than bright eyes..it's just the landmark of that occurence.)

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nonnycries
02-12-2005

Rated 0 
When I start focusing on how things will never really get better I get really depressed. Like some of you were saying, We start school and think I cant wait til I am done with school but once we are finished with school we just start college and then we think I cant wait til I am finished with college and then we get a job and we never get a break. We will always be doing something we dont want to do. and once we retire we will be old and in constant pain. Life sucks dick. Never any fun and if you do have fun you just come spiraling back down to regular life again. Why cant it be the other way around? Why cant the majority of life be built on fun and the minority be built upon work? well I know why, because then the world would far apart. Our earth is built upon work and unhappiness. We live off of thoughts of our vacations and our anticpation for new vacations. we spend more time thinking about good days then actually living good days. I could go on for hours...

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helenrips
02-17-2005

Rated 0 
pure poetry

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turquoiseumbrella
03-02-2005

Rated 0 
i saw this song performed live by conor. it was amazing.

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