Look, I don't know why everyone's fighting over whether its about the environment or drugs or childhood or divorce. It's about all of them. Its all the same thing, human nature, just in different perspectives and scales. Any fight between our selfish, excitable, inexhaustible child mind and our cool, logical, responsible adult mind can fit this song.
I'll take it apart from the childhood perspective as vaguely as I can, you can apply it to anything else, yourself.
You were a child
Crawling on your knees towards it
What's 'it'? No way to tell. I'm a firm believer in the "Intelligent Writer" theory. If we were supposed to know, we would. As kids, we are unexperienced. We really have no idea what we're doing or what we're moving towards. It's there, it's exciting, and we want it right now.
Making Mama so proud
But your voice is too loud
There are people telling us what the consequences are, what's good and what's bad, but we won't listen. It's not in our nature, we have to find out for ourselves.
No time to think of consequences
We can only ever know retrospect
Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
This is the pressure from others. Grow up. Think before you act. Do the right thing. It's kindly meant, it's wise advice, it's constantly buzzing around the back of our mind, (which is why it's the chorus), and one day soon we will be forced to own up to it. But we don't want to be trapped. There's everything we'd have to give up:
A family of trees wanted to be haunted
People get too caught up in literal and double meanings, and symbolism, and they forget the imagery. Haven't you ever been a kid in a forest, running just far enough to pretend your parents aren't breathing down your neck? Trees are so massive and fascinating and infinite! What if you could leave this whole dilemma behind, and just stay there, and be as outrageous as you want? Haunt the forest, live in a thriving, infinite, passionate world that cares for you like a family, forever. That's only 90% of all children's stories ever written. Maybe we can pretend for just a little while longer that that's the world we live in, or that if we wait it will find us before we have to leave it behind. But of course, that makes us ghosts. We'd be frozen in place, just as trapped.
The water is warm
But it's sending me shivers
Contrasts; warm is a positive, it's pulling me in, but shivers, it's also frightening. Again, it's mostly indecision, aprehension, we're not willing to move ahead, but we can't just stay where we are forevermore.
a baby is born
crying out for attention
More contrasts: having a kid is great, and being a baby is wonderful and innocent. On the other hand, caring for a baby is exhausting, being a baby is scary as hell and dangerous. You can't have innocence without experience, or good without bad, can't take without giving.
the memories fade
like looking through a fogged mirror
pretty straight forward. Time passes, passions are dulled, lessons distorted and forgotten. Our memories are fallible, so history repeats itself.
decision to decisions are made and not bought
This bit's clever, it would normaly be decision to decision/ decisions are made and not bought. By condensing the two bits we get decision to decisions, plural, as we go from making a one choice to making more and more, (might be growing autonomy or repeat offences. Or both).
Decisons are made and not bought, I thought was a play on words, you usualy 'make' things with the intention to sell them, someone else decides what they're worth, gives you what you deserve, and takes them off your hands. You make all of these decisions and they don't go anywhere, no one keeps track of them, rewards/punishes you for them. They just keep piling up in your head, defining you as this big jumbled mess of good and bad, right and wrong. Which leads into the next few lines, by theme and by rhyme.
But I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot
I guess not
Life is nowhere near as simple, safe, and easy as the white lies our parents tell us. It's like the Doctor Who quote
"When you're a kid, they tell you it's all... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder.
Look, I don't know why everyone's fighting over whether its about the environment or drugs or childhood or divorce. It's about all of them. Its all the same thing, human nature, just in different perspectives and scales. Any fight between our selfish, excitable, inexhaustible child mind and our cool, logical, responsible adult mind can fit this song.
I'll take it apart from the childhood perspective as vaguely as I can, you can apply it to anything else, yourself.
You were a child Crawling on your knees towards it
What's 'it'? No way to tell. I'm a firm believer in the "Intelligent Writer" theory. If we were supposed to know, we would. As kids, we are unexperienced. We really have no idea what we're doing or what we're moving towards. It's there, it's exciting, and we want it right now.
Making Mama so proud But your voice is too loud
There are people telling us what the consequences are, what's good and what's bad, but we won't listen. It's not in our nature, we have to find out for ourselves.
No time to think of consequences
We can only ever know retrospect
Control yourself Take only what you need from it
This is the pressure from others. Grow up. Think before you act. Do the right thing. It's kindly meant, it's wise advice, it's constantly buzzing around the back of our mind, (which is why it's the chorus), and one day soon we will be forced to own up to it. But we don't want to be trapped. There's everything we'd have to give up:
A family of trees wanted to be haunted
People get too caught up in literal and double meanings, and symbolism, and they forget the imagery. Haven't you ever been a kid in a forest, running just far enough to pretend your parents aren't breathing down your neck? Trees are so massive and fascinating and infinite! What if you could leave this whole dilemma behind, and just stay there, and be as outrageous as you want? Haunt the forest, live in a thriving, infinite, passionate world that cares for you like a family, forever. That's only 90% of all children's stories ever written. Maybe we can pretend for just a little while longer that that's the world we live in, or that if we wait it will find us before we have to leave it behind. But of course, that makes us ghosts. We'd be frozen in place, just as trapped.
The water is warm But it's sending me shivers
Contrasts; warm is a positive, it's pulling me in, but shivers, it's also frightening. Again, it's mostly indecision, aprehension, we're not willing to move ahead, but we can't just stay where we are forevermore.
a baby is born crying out for attention
More contrasts: having a kid is great, and being a baby is wonderful and innocent. On the other hand, caring for a baby is exhausting, being a baby is scary as hell and dangerous. You can't have innocence without experience, or good without bad, can't take without giving.
the memories fade like looking through a fogged mirror
pretty straight forward. Time passes, passions are dulled, lessons distorted and forgotten. Our memories are fallible, so history repeats itself.
decision to decisions are made and not bought
This bit's clever, it would normaly be decision to decision/ decisions are made and not bought. By condensing the two bits we get decision to decisions, plural, as we go from making a one choice to making more and more, (might be growing autonomy or repeat offences. Or both). Decisons are made and not bought, I thought was a play on words, you usualy 'make' things with the intention to sell them, someone else decides what they're worth, gives you what you deserve, and takes them off your hands. You make all of these decisions and they don't go anywhere, no one keeps track of them, rewards/punishes you for them. They just keep piling up in your head, defining you as this big jumbled mess of good and bad, right and wrong. Which leads into the next few lines, by theme and by rhyme.
But I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot I guess not
Life is nowhere near as simple, safe, and easy as the white lies our parents tell us. It's like the Doctor Who quote
"When you're a kid, they tell you it's all... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder.
And so much better."
This was an EPIC INTERPRETATION!
This was an EPIC INTERPRETATION!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Why thank you.
Why thank you.
@smmar194 I really love your interpretation on this song. Best one yet.
@smmar194 I really love your interpretation on this song. Best one yet.