Lyric discussion by ElvisAteMyDonuts 

wutdahellz,

Because you asked for feedback with regard to your "women in combat" thesis -- well, here it goes.

wutdahellz said:

i think this song has to do with women in the military and the trials and tribulations they face from people who believe they dont belong. i think it also has to do with our troops being over in the middle east and Mercer's discontent with the whole situation.

elvisatemydonuts response:

I think that music is subjective, and lyrics can mean different things to different people when filtered through their own experiences or unique world view. You seem to be very focused on women’s issues and the war on terror.

I disagree with your military/war conclusions because if that was Mercer’s intent, he’d have written,“...girls of the West”, not the North. (If we were at war in Venezuela, “...girls of the North” would fit, but we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan where we are known as "The West").

The main, (and most obvious), reason I’m sure you came up with incorrect assumptions about the song’s meaning, is because you started off basing your conclusions from incorrect lyrics.

Examples:

wutdahellz said:

frozen in two coats-->metaphor for having two selves..being a woman and being an officer...and how its impossible to segregate the two.

But with the correct lyric:

frozen winter coats--> Well, there goes that metaphor of “two selves” (which in my opinion was a huuuge stretch anyway).

wutdahellz said:

fire past one fire the one-->guns.

correct lyric:

file past one five and one-->NOT guns.

I will say this wutdahellz; You have a very fertile imagination!

It’s much more likely that he is recalling his school days in England, (he spent part of his youth growing up in England), where “The North” is a common phrase referring to the working-class cities and/or the lower-middle class.

But even though that is slightly more likely, it's still impossible to say what the true meaning of this song is without asking James himself, because each line is more ambiguous than the next and seems to have little to do with the previous lines.

Perhaps this song was all a stream-of-consciousness effort where he drops the following huge hint that there is no actual cohesive meaning to this song, but only random thoughts:

"Follow the lines and wonder why there's no connection."

Of course, I may be wrong.

reminds me of a really great U2 song. this album is pretty good.

This song is very nonstalgic... It's almost as if he is critisizing the educational system for encouraging a standardized approach to learning as opposed to a more individual method. He kind of describes as going through motions during school, alwasy considered insobordinate to the system (phantom and a fly). After "A week of rolling eyes"(week day) they are off to a friends house listening to music and drinking. During his youth his community all "feels fine be it silk or slime" implying now that he looks back it seems foreign and superficial.

The correct lyric is "foals in winter coats".

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