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I live in America
With a pair of Payless shoes
The upper penisula
And the television news
And I've seen my wife
At the K-Mart
In strange ideas
We live apart
I live in a trailer home
With a snow mobile, my car
The window is broken out
And the interstate is far
I drove all night
To find my child
In strange ideas
He's been reviled
In strange ideas
In stranger times
I've no idea
What's right sometimes
I lost my mind
I lost my life
I lost my job
I lost my wife
With a pair of Payless shoes
The upper penisula
And the television news
And I've seen my wife
At the K-Mart
In strange ideas
We live apart
I live in a trailer home
With a snow mobile, my car
The window is broken out
And the interstate is far
I drove all night
To find my child
In strange ideas
He's been reviled
In strange ideas
In stranger times
I've no idea
What's right sometimes
I lost my mind
I lost my life
I lost my job
I lost my wife
Lyrics submitted by antennas
Track duration: 02:45
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This song is so very sad to me. Beautiful musically, but the lyrics are disheartening. But they also reflect the state most people live in. Hopelessness.
v1: patriotism, generic strip mall consumerism, t.v. news and K-mart. the background is set - lower/middle class, low population town of the typical consumer. in this case the town also carries the stigma of having once thrived and is now decidely not doing so. and although i'm sure the u.p. is beautiful and peaceful, i don't believe the character in the song is experiencing it as such. this other side of the scene is also set here in verse one - a man who sees his wife, with in the very least this barrier of 'strange ideas', the recurring point in the song, between them. the ideas that they are divorced, that they are so distant they bump into one another at the store, or that he watches her indulging in her consumerism from an almost out-of-body perspective because he is so unable to connect with that consumerism are all possibilities, none concretely 'provable'. they also do not really effect the theme of the song - this man feels a distance from his wife, caused or worsened by his/these 'strange ideas, and on some level noticing a certain banality in his environment. (again, this isn't picking on the u.p. - the first line is 'I live in America' and this scene could happen many places in this country.)
v2: further personalize scene - this guy's life sucks. live's in a trailer, it's winter and he's plowin snow when he drives it's so high, broken window in his ride to boot and the journey is gonna be long, he lives out in the middle of nowhere. second part is his strange ideas again, this time causing his child (literal or figurative, again is not really important or truly knowable) that he has put a lot of time into 'finding'. whether this is his inner child, a metaphor for a dream or ideal he once had, a christian image suddenly from a God/Christ perspective not being able to find him through his 'strange ideas', or literal are all not specifically important and can possible be all of the above. point is these 'strange ideas' have come between him and something he loves again.
v3: bringing it back to the strange ideas. the times we live in are even stranger. they are strange, in a negative way, to a christian/spiritual worldview. they are strange, as in counterintuitive, from a philosophical, universally humanitarian and/or ecologically responsible viewpoint. they are, for whatever the reason strange to him much like the strange ideas he has/hears. he is confused by the world around him not corresponding to what he thinks and feels. he had it all but it was all rooted in the fleshly world, which cannot be counted on to comfort and protect us. he, much like the u.p., has lost his former glory.
great song, great lament, great personification of a part of this nation. and nice, subtle nudge in the direction of hope.