Lyrics for He Doesn't Know Why as interpreted by chickenflicker

He Doesn't Know Why Lyrics
Penniless and tired, with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
Memory is a fickle siren song
I didn't understand

In the gentle light as the morning nears
You don't say a single word of the last two years
Where you were when you reached the frontier
I didn't understand, no

See your rugged hands and a silver knife
Twenty dollars in your hand makes you hold so tight
All the evidence of your vagrant life
My brother you were born

And you will try to do what you did before
Pull the wool over your eyes
For a week or more
Let your family take you back to your original mind

There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can say
There's nothing I can say
I can say

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PassiveTheory
06-10-2008

Rated -2 
"All the evidence of your vacant life"

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Havenspear
06-21-2008

Rated 0 
This song is so beautiful. The movement is totally natural, so easy to listen to. I adore the drum part.

I think this song is pretty straight forward in meaning: someone has been going through a rough time, maybe for 2 years, and they just want to simplify and forget about it. And the narrator can't do anything to help. Sad, but beautiful.

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songyone
07-10-2008

Rated +2 
I don't know if I'm reading things into this song that aren't there, but to me he is speaking to his older brother who has disappeared for a couple of years and comes home in pretty sorry state. The singer doesn't remember him as he sees him now. It seems the brother is suffering through something, possibly drug addiction or maybe just a unhappy life, and has done this before - come home and relied on his family while he gets himself together. There is a longing on the part of the singer to help, but he realizes there is nothing he can say or do to help his brother.

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1 Reply
Chamoses
07-11-2008

Rated +1 
I think this song is modernly about the prodigal son.

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bobbyg273
07-17-2008

Rated 0 
reminds me of the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas

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JeebusChristie
07-20-2008

Rated 0 
I think the line is "where you were when you reached the frontier"

great song

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OliverJames
07-27-2008

Rated 0 
This song is actually about me.

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undeux
10-01-2008

Rated 0 
It's actually "Where you were or when you reached the frontier" not "Well you will be, you've reached the frontier"

:)

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undeux
10-01-2008

Rated 0 
^ Oops, my bad. Ignore that.

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undeux
10-01-2008

Rated 0 
Gah, I mean ignore me posting the corrections to the lyrics (though the corrections I postedare correct). I only saw after that there's a Report Thread and I shouldn't post the corrections here.

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organic joes
10-02-2008

Rated 0 
this song gives me the chills, it seriously beautiful.

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LilRyan732
11-17-2008

Rated 0 
Listen to the Robin's flow on this song. It's mesmerizing. His voice is SO enigmatic.

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greenstar33
01-02-2009

Rated 0 
i apologize if this is the wrong place to post this, but i need to make a correction to the lyrics. "all the evidence of your VAGRANT life" not vacant. they do sound similar.

as for meaning, it seems like this is a family member speaking to their homeless brother. the family member realizes that he can't help him, and is trying to let go, while letting him know that he is still there for him.

a truly beautiful song.

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hotexcelsior
01-13-2009

Rated +1 
What started out as a coincidence has become what I'd love this song to be about. We can try to cut this song apart and cross reference everything, but the truth is:

This song reminds me, oddly, of the movie Into the Wild or the main character, Chris McCandless (the movie was based on his life). Here's why:

"Penniless and tired, with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
Memory is a fickle siren song
I didn't understand"

Chris would be penniless as he burned all of his money and donated his savings to charity. His hair is long because he's been homeless (willingly) for a long time. His face in his last ever portrait is really thin and sick looking, as it is theorized that he ate a poisonous seed which caused his death. This song would be sung from the point of view of his sister, Carine McCandless.

"In the gentle light as the morning nears
You don't say a single word of your last two years
Where you were or when you reached the frontier
I didn't understand, no"

I don't think he ever contacted her, and he was gone for two years (and subsequently died in Alaska, definitely a FRONTIER). She didn't understand why he had to do all of this.

"See your rugged hands and a silver knife
Twenty dollars in your hand makes you hold so tight
All the evidence of your vacant life
My brother you were born"

He would need a silver knife to live in the wild, and I'm sure his hands would have shown some wear-and-tear. No idea what the money would be, as I have never researched his life... I know he worked some odd jobs to get pocket change (like 20 dollars?) for supplies. He's vacant as he owns no fixtures or furniture, and he was finally how he wanted to be (in the wild).

"And you will try to do what you did before
Pull the wool over your eyes
For a week or more
Let your family take you back to your original mind"

The last verse, to me, is that he is trying to cope with his parents' messed up marriage and their bad job in raising him and his sister. He pulls the wool over his eyes, meaning to hoodwink or deceive. He's tricking himself into thinking he wants this. She tells him to let his family take him back to being sane, basically.

"There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can say
There's nothing I can say
I can say "

There was nothing Carine could have done, as they had no idea where Chris was. Chris died in August after ingesting (theory, of course) poisonous seeds which caused his insides to basically betray him. His body was found in September by some hunters.

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2 Replies
hotexcelsior
01-13-2009

Rated 0 
I meant to fix this: it is

My brother you were GONE

not born.

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*Gabby*
01-28-2009

Rated 0 
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SONG A VIDEO!

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WarholMetricSystem
01-29-2009

Rated 0 
I actually came here to say this reminds me of "Into the Wild"
Very cool.
I love this song---it reminds me of one of my friends.


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pecknoldbanhart
03-16-2009

Rated 0 
Love it <3

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arlexahnderuh
03-27-2009

Rated +1 
I love the piano bit at the end.

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spastikcomma
05-14-2009

Rated +1 
I love the "pull the wool over your eyes" bit. So many people think they can go home and be the person they were years ago when their troubles get to be too much. But it just doesn't work.

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1 Reply
elishajean
05-15-2009

Rated 0 
someone who needs to find who they were.
they have been gone for an extensive amount of time,
now that they have come back, they need to find who they were before they left.

'let your family take you back to your original mind'



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raphaelsassaki
06-19-2009

Rated 0 
I'm sure they made this with Paris, Texas (and not Into the Wild) in mind.
It's a story of a speechless guy (There's nothing I can say) found by his brother* in the desert, near the Mexico frontier (the first and second stanzas are exactly this scene), who then takes him home for a week* or so; later he tries to build his family again (Let your family take you back to your original mind). It's all there, no crazy explanations needed.


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iangurteen
06-30-2009

Rated +1 
$20 in your hand THAT you hold so tight, where are you hearing MAKES?

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wooventeeth
10-13-2009

Rated 0 
this song much reminds me of when i was doing heroin and how others saw me as. im now clean what helped was this song it gave me an idea of how shitty i was.

Penniless and tired, with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
Memory is a fickle siren song
I didn't understand

translation:i had no money left, because i had bought heroin with it. my hair was grown long for i had no need to care for it. my face was changed and so was my body i didnt look as i should have. no one understood why i would do it to myself neither did i.


In the gentle light as the morning nears
You don't say a single word of the last two years
Where you were when you reached the frontier
I didn't understand, no

tanslation:stayed up all night trying to gather everything together. i didnt say a single word of my shameful mistakes and what i have become. what the fuck i was thinking when i became everthing i hated.


See your rugged hands and a silver knife
Twenty dollars in your hand makes you hold so tight
All the evidence of your vagrant life
My brother you were born

translation:my hands where covered in filth and anguish my knife i used to cut my shit.twenty dollars in my hand would make me hold so tight. the evidence of a wanderer who has no established residence or visible means of support of a life.

And you will try to do what you did before
Pull the wool over your eyes
For a week or more
Let your family take you back to your original mind

translation: i tried to fo what i did before i hid myself from everyone and denied truth for weeks or more. my family found out about my addictionand took me back to my orginal self.


There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can do
There's nothing I can say
There's nothing I can say
I can say

translation:their was nothing my friends could do or say to help. the only people would be my family.


this is just a translation of my own experince the song could be about something completley diffrent like killing someone or something. but this is mine and how it did help me realize what was really going on.

by the way im a girl my name is a little odd :))




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slumberingbee
11-04-2009

Rated 0 
a few days ago i confided a secret in a new friend, a boy who had introduced me a few weeks ago to fleet foxes. i've been listening to 'ragged wood' often but i didn't notice the correlation between the situation that i'd find myself in with this boy and the words to this beautiful song. i am unable to love this boy because i am in a long-distance relationship with another, very different, person who will be arriving to stay with me for six months in a month and a half from now. since meeting my new friend i have been driven to distraction by his poetic way, amazed at the freedom i feel in expressing myself to him, have fallen unfortunately in a type of sad love with him. we had spent a few curious nights conversing until the wee hours and ending up curled like kittens around each other, clothed and warm in his bed. we kissed in a moonlit garden. we tiptoed delicately around the romance that we could not have. and i have shattered, with the breath of my secret, our understanding. i suppose it is a good thing, but find myself despondent nonetheless. i wish i had never given him that crystal ball to hold. he was too innocent.
i had told my friend a few weeks before my worries about my mother. she had been a stripper after leaving my father and finding it impossible to give her children the various lessons and comforts that she wished to give us on a grade nine education. though she had found more respectable employment and a rich boyfriend to help her fill in the gaps, she had lately regressed to a type of 'whoring' that worried me. though i can not know the particulars i do know that she has been getting paid to have lunch with rich businessmen for the beautiful company and witty conversation she offers. she is a beautiful woman and a very fine person but i feel that every date she has degrades her. not a good situation.
what i didn't tell my friend was that young as i am, i have forayed into her world. last year, floundering and unsure, oppressed and unhappy (i won't go into details), i decided to make money fast and run away. i never reached my goal, thank god. but i did walk through the hellish underworld of prostitution. i sold my body for $80 the half-hour in a condo downtown. i welcomed twenty strangers into my arms over two cold months. i became scared of my shadow, a shell of my former self. i quit, got tested, found i was healthy, and have vowed to myself never to repeat.
when i told my boy the full story of the past two years, he didn't know what to say. he didn't know what to do. he said 'it's just something i don't want to hear about.' later that night i went up to his room and knocked on the door. he was lying in dark in his bed. 'it's not a charade,' i promised. i lay my head on his bed and left my feet on the floor. he petted my hair kindly. we said nothing, nothing, nothing. he suddenly kissed me, lay back down. without unlacing my boots i curled around him and he slept. i watched dawn come and left at 8 without any words. there's nothing he can say. i'll have to find my original mind on my own.


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