The song is about the frustration of trying to make an impossible change, one that rests on immutable shores. To this end, one would sacrifice almost anything, his "humanity" that looks questionable already, going back to roots, trying to grasp a savage intelligibility on things. When all the mental mystics have failed to account for the contradictory images flashing on one's eyes and in the back of one's mind, the person reverts to an archaic form of oneself, a primitive that only relies on brute force to procure all the bare necessities - lunch and sex, without any care for thought or emotion.
This is the tragedy of the modern man, the one encaged in the cities of a civilisation built on lies and the fear of death. Does he have any real emotions anymore, or maybe just socially negotiated outlets and set expectations for his domesticated feelings? Children and young people enter this monstruous urban machinery of identities, that expects them to learn, behave, be polite, eat regularly, grow up, study, get jobs, pay taxes and become a cog in this political machine.
For a long time in Western civilisation, holidays have been like a return to paradise, to a lost nature that man wants to reconnect with by working all around the year just to get a chance at getting there for a few weeks, on those calm shores. Just the same, weekends were supposed to ease the pressure built up during the week in the urban machinery of work and duty and allow someone to get away from it all. Paradoxically, some actually had to go through even greater hardship during the weekends just to be able to be someone during the next week. These are the weekend warriors, people who have to fight during the weekend just to be able to find who they really are. These are a new kind of warriors, modern ones, artificial warriors, just as people going to the gym look like art-ificial heroes, pumped up with special nutrition and chemicals. All this giant effort for the art-ificial effect of looking like someone who is someone in the city.
Somewhere along this path human instincts have been distorted. Some manage to adapt to the machinery I described, others are rejected and live on the fringes of society, harbouring feelings of anger and planning their own personal armageddon on this world. This type of urban man, as I explained, reverts to a primeval state of emotional reactions, is easy to anger and prime for aggressive retaliation. This is what "instant battle plans written on the sidewalk" means: the person is quick to draw an emotional weapon on anyone who slights him while walking through the urban grid. He has uncouth reactions, scaring the kids off the lawn, and planning for an imaginary revenge on others ("Giving us time to make the makeshift bombs"). One of the causes of the Columbine school shooting was that the parents of the kids who committed the shooting had banned them from using their computers, because they were spending too much time playing video games. This is what deprived the two teenagers of their virtual world where they used to vent. They "couldn't use computers anymore" too, as the guys in the this song, so they started planning for a massive bombing of their school. It might be something related to their going back to roots, though.
The trip to Arizona seems to be an esoteric reference. It might have something to do with a Wild at Heart organisation there... Going back to roots requires one to learn how to deal with animal life in the wild properly. Maybe going back in the wild will rekindle one's lost instinct, "grow the arm back", make the change while synching to the natural vibes of the sand and cold.
"My predictions are the only things I have"
Usually people who can make predictions are those who lost their life somehow. Tiresias who was able to penetrate the sacred secret of sex and time was blinded by gods and then given the gift of profecy. He could see the future, but he could neither prevent it nor live his life.
The last stanza is just negative affect related to this realisation. Someone stuck in his inner world of images and mental mystics who doesn't find the power/instict to just be in a natural and normal way. He has to constantly process and relate to what is expected from him by the civilisation he lives in.
The song is about the frustration of trying to make an impossible change, one that rests on immutable shores. To this end, one would sacrifice almost anything, his "humanity" that looks questionable already, going back to roots, trying to grasp a savage intelligibility on things. When all the mental mystics have failed to account for the contradictory images flashing on one's eyes and in the back of one's mind, the person reverts to an archaic form of oneself, a primitive that only relies on brute force to procure all the bare necessities - lunch and sex, without any care for thought or emotion.
This is the tragedy of the modern man, the one encaged in the cities of a civilisation built on lies and the fear of death. Does he have any real emotions anymore, or maybe just socially negotiated outlets and set expectations for his domesticated feelings? Children and young people enter this monstruous urban machinery of identities, that expects them to learn, behave, be polite, eat regularly, grow up, study, get jobs, pay taxes and become a cog in this political machine.
For a long time in Western civilisation, holidays have been like a return to paradise, to a lost nature that man wants to reconnect with by working all around the year just to get a chance at getting there for a few weeks, on those calm shores. Just the same, weekends were supposed to ease the pressure built up during the week in the urban machinery of work and duty and allow someone to get away from it all. Paradoxically, some actually had to go through even greater hardship during the weekends just to be able to be someone during the next week. These are the weekend warriors, people who have to fight during the weekend just to be able to find who they really are. These are a new kind of warriors, modern ones, artificial warriors, just as people going to the gym look like art-ificial heroes, pumped up with special nutrition and chemicals. All this giant effort for the art-ificial effect of looking like someone who is someone in the city.
Somewhere along this path human instincts have been distorted. Some manage to adapt to the machinery I described, others are rejected and live on the fringes of society, harbouring feelings of anger and planning their own personal armageddon on this world. This type of urban man, as I explained, reverts to a primeval state of emotional reactions, is easy to anger and prime for aggressive retaliation. This is what "instant battle plans written on the sidewalk" means: the person is quick to draw an emotional weapon on anyone who slights him while walking through the urban grid. He has uncouth reactions, scaring the kids off the lawn, and planning for an imaginary revenge on others ("Giving us time to make the makeshift bombs"). One of the causes of the Columbine school shooting was that the parents of the kids who committed the shooting had banned them from using their computers, because they were spending too much time playing video games. This is what deprived the two teenagers of their virtual world where they used to vent. They "couldn't use computers anymore" too, as the guys in the this song, so they started planning for a massive bombing of their school. It might be something related to their going back to roots, though.
The trip to Arizona seems to be an esoteric reference. It might have something to do with a Wild at Heart organisation there... Going back to roots requires one to learn how to deal with animal life in the wild properly. Maybe going back in the wild will rekindle one's lost instinct, "grow the arm back", make the change while synching to the natural vibes of the sand and cold.
"My predictions are the only things I have" Usually people who can make predictions are those who lost their life somehow. Tiresias who was able to penetrate the sacred secret of sex and time was blinded by gods and then given the gift of profecy. He could see the future, but he could neither prevent it nor live his life.
The last stanza is just negative affect related to this realisation. Someone stuck in his inner world of images and mental mystics who doesn't find the power/instict to just be in a natural and normal way. He has to constantly process and relate to what is expected from him by the civilisation he lives in.