Closer to Fine

This is NOT about GAY PEOPLE or COMING OUT of the closet!!! I love this song too, it's chords and simple playing style is awesome, besides it sounding great on the guitar. But you are wrong when you say it's about gay people or coming out. On songfacts.com/detail.php
it quotes an interview with Emily Saliers, who wrote the song, who said the "song is about not beating yourself up too hard to get your answer from one place. There's no panacea, that in order to be balanced or feel closer to fine it's okay to draw from this or to draw from that, to draw from a bunch of different sources. So it's about being confused but looking for the answers, and in the end knowing that you're going to be fine. No seeking just one definitive answer."

So it's about the confusion of life itself and trying to find answers to the questions of life, and instead just let it be and live.

I think she may be either talking to a really good friend or a lover. I think she is talking about how we shouldn't take life so seriously, its only life after all! If you spend your entire life trying to figure everything out, you'll miss alot along the way and probably end up more confused about life than you were to begin with. There is more than one answer to 'life' questions. We should live our lives instead of worrying whether or not we're living the right way!

They are trying to tell you to quit finding meaning with life. It only will make you questioning more and dig you deeper into a pit of sorrow.

Instead, we should live it up because it is "just a life". Don't look to God, exercise, Tibet, therapy, or some magic potion to make your life worthwhile. Get out there and have a blast and quit preoccupying your mind with what might make you happy and enjoy life's ups and downs.

To me this song reminds me of a quote about Taoism. ""The tao that can be named is not the true tao"" To me we search for all the answers in higher education( spent four years prostrate to the higher mind Got my paper and I was free) Finding answers in a bottle or other people, in children, in dr's ,psychiatrists , religion, exercise and the more we look - the further we become from the answer. Maybe the answer is just to BE and we might be closer to fine.

My favorite line in the song? Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable And lightness has a call that's hard to hear It is so true - the darkness -if it be depression,sadness, or cynism, fear or other darkness is so much easier to to choose. It has a hunger that overpowers and consumes everything in it's wake. The lightness's call is much harder to hear.

this is a kick-ass song, i love it! somehow i don't think it's about being straight or gay, it seems more like it's just trying to say that if you are constantly trying to find out what the point to life is you are missing it! god, it's such a great song!

I agree w/ the rest of you, it's a great song, but I don't think it's about being gay specifically. Instead I think it's about life in a more general sense: what not to waste time on, what makes true happiness, and making the most out of life.

When I first came out of the closet, I made it my life mission to look for songs that best describe what I was feeling...no other song best describes that than this one. It ROCKS!

Basically, the song is about a gay person's life and how he/she yearns for the world to understand his/her life. The Indigo Girls are speaking in behalf of the the gay peeps when they wrote this song, and it has now become my personal anthem to anyone who's opposed to, or are continuously questioning, my life .

Let's break it down by stanza: 1.Basically,the person in this stanza (who happens to be gay) is saying that he has taken his life more seriously, simply because of al the homophobia, ignorance and gay hate crimes.

2. Brilliant description of being in the closet--hiding (darkness is a hunger, meaning you get used to the false comfort of pretending you're not gay) your true sexuality and negelceting the urgency of coming out (light has a call that's hard to hear), feeling "safe" till you can't take the pretence anymore (till I sank it ), being contrlled by fear (wrapped around you like a blanket)----sad but true, and extremely well thought of.

3,5,7.You know how some people actully try and find WHY some people are gay? This stanza says---"WHO CARES??"---People looked for answers everywhere; doctors, preachers, the bible---they searched high and low for causes and the moral implications---but if the world just focuses A LOT LESS on the why's and how's and just let us live our life the same way straight people do, then the closer we'll all be to inner and outer peace.

4. I think the gay persona was consulting an elderly gay person who had it tough; he knew exactly what the person was going through, and can even see through his pretensions and lies. And the singer learned so much from him that he decided to come out---and because of that, he felt free.
5. This one is more literal; the dperession of being in a closet has taken a toll on him, and he now wants to find solace---that's is EXTREMELY hard to do. :)

God, I love this song. Indigo Girls ROCK!!

I think this song's general meaning is talking about how so many people are trying to find understanding for their life, their existance on this earth. And I think she's saying that you can't always go to one source to find out what your meaning is. "There's more than one answer to these questions Pointing me in a crooked line And the less I seek my source for some definitive The closer I am to fine" I think the last lines mean that if you dont go out trying to find one exact reason for your existance (like The Bible) you will find your own true meaning clearer than any other person can tell you. You have to find out what your life means for yourself.

I think for myself and many of us, we can be consumed by the negativity in our life, we worry about what might happen. We rob ourselves of happiness. “the darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable” Yet we usually have so many wonderful things in our life that we are not grateful for nor appreciate because “the lightness has a call that’s hard to hear” That consuming fear can keep us trapped in once place, a place that we perhaps we should just take the risk and jump. “I wrapped my fear around me like a blanket, I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it”

Live life lightly, love and be grateful. Its only life after all.

Why on earth would someone interpret this song to be about being gay or coming out? This song has a very simple yet powerful message. There is no meaning to life or your existence, and the closer you get to accepting that fact the closer you will be to being ok with it. This is a very hard pill for many to swallow, and their continued searches just end in more and more frustration because the meaning to life is there is no meaning.