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"howdy, lem," my grandfather said with his eyes closed
wiping the eastbound dust from his sunburned brow
a life before doubt.
i smell the engine grease and mint the wind is blending
under the moan of rotting elm in the silo floor.
down a hill of pine tree quills we made our way
to the bottom and the ferns where thick moss grows
beside a stream.
under the rocks are snails and we can fills our pockets
and let them go one by one all day in a brand new place.
you were no ordinary drain on her defenses
and she was no ordinary girl
Oh, Inverted World
if every moment of our lives
were cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child
i'd not roll my eyes so.
wiping the eastbound dust from his sunburned brow
a life before doubt.
i smell the engine grease and mint the wind is blending
under the moan of rotting elm in the silo floor.
down a hill of pine tree quills we made our way
to the bottom and the ferns where thick moss grows
beside a stream.
under the rocks are snails and we can fills our pockets
and let them go one by one all day in a brand new place.
you were no ordinary drain on her defenses
and she was no ordinary girl
Oh, Inverted World
if every moment of our lives
were cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child
i'd not roll my eyes so.
Lyrics submitted by rudegirl
Track duration: 04:08
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"you were no ordinary drain on her defenses
and she was no ordinary girl"
that makes me almost cry for some reason. i am addicted. ♥ thank you shins.
(link to the cited text)
"if every moment of our lives
were cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child
i'd not roll my eyes so."
i think he's just saying that the world is rough you know, not cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child, and if only it could be, he wouldn't roll his eyes so much. he wouldn't think so negatively and be so annoyed by the world. but in reality it's not and it's rough and rotten like the elm in the silo floor.
The lyric/album title "Oh, Inverted World," is a direct reference to Karl Marx, specifically his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his first noteworthy deliberation, which contains many of Marx's more famous claims, e.g. religion as the opiate of the masses, etc. In the introduction to the critique, Marx attempts to redefine religious criticism by postulating the following idea:
"...man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an *inverted world*. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification."
The Shins, it seems, are not fans of religion in general:
(the following is speculation)
Many of the album's songs and others in the band's body of work seem to allude to this "inverted world" idea, as well as Marxism in general (So Says I) and disillusionment with religion (Saint Simon).
"howdy, lem," my grandpa said with his eyes closed
wiping the eastbound dust from his sunburned brow
a life before doubt.
[He's remembering the days he spent with his grandfather as a child, a time before he was corrupted, before he started thinking so much, before he doubted everything. His grandfather seems to have been a working man]
i smell the engine grease and mint the wind is blending
under the moan of rotting elm in the silo floor.
[He can still smell the mint and engine grease in the air from back then, the silo floor he used to walk on is now rotted and old, which is symbollic of him becoming an adult. Life is no longer as bright and fascinating as it once was.]
down a hill of pine tree quills we made our way
to the bottom and the ferns where thick moss grows
beside a stream.
[see next]
under the rocks are snails and we can fills our pockets
and let them go one by one all day in a brand new place.
[He recalls how him and his grandpa used to walk through nature down a hill to a special place where there was a stream. There he used to catch snails and let them go in different places, almost like it was a game. ]
you were no ordinary drain on her defenses
and she was no ordinary girl
Oh, Inverted World
[This part, to me, is the main focus of the song. The narrator is now thinking about a much more recent event, probably about a failed a relationship. When he says 'you' I think he is actually talking to himself, saying that she was one in a million and he truly loved her and he regrets that his way of thinking drained her and eventually led to their downfall. "What a backwards world," is the afterthought of his nostalgia.]
if every moment of our lives
were cradled softly in the hands of some strange and gentle child
i'd not roll my eyes so.
[Now he ties the whole thing together. My guess is that his last girlfriend believed in God or fate or something but the narrator disagreed, which led to their falling out. He remembers the childhood game he played with the snails and sees it as a metaphor for God's hypothetical relationship with humans. He thinks, "if only life were really like that... but it's not" and then rolls his eyes. The last stanza also feels like the narrator is lamenting his childhood]
It's a wonderful song. Mercer always does a fantastic job of intertwining complex ideas and themes among his experiences with relationships and love.
The narrator then reflects on his childhood, when he gathered snails and carried them to different places, thereby directing the paths of the snails. This stanza ties with the last, where he reveals his doubt that human beings are like snails in a innocent child's hands, and his doubt that the paths of human lives are in any way governed by another being.
The first few lines of the final stanza are the most confusing to me. The shift to second person is random. Perhaps the narrator is talking to himself. The interpretation that I came up with for these lines is that the narrator is reflecting on his past love for a girl whom he thought he was destined to be with forever. Their relationship doesn't work out, however, and this is the event that causes him to lose his belief in fate. It may be a stretch but it works for me.
The Shins are a pretty decent band; I get it. But too many people think they are like THE greatest, deepest, most specialest band ever. Not so. Not every lyric (by ANY artist) will have some deep-seated meaning (or any meaning), as much as many will assume. Sometimes lyrics are nonsensical, added because they need to finish a rhyme or something.