Shell Games

Conor Oberst, the thirty-one year old lead singer of the band Bright Eyes, has always struggled with the concept of organized religion. He was raised Catholic in Omaha, Nebraska, attending the Catholic school (Carpenter). Religion was always a big part of Oberst’s life. He wrote Shell Games, a song from his most recent album, The People’s Key, released in early 2011 (ConorOberst.com), about his lifelong crisis of faith and his search for salvation in a world that he doesn’t believe holds either of these. The song is used to explain his struggles and eventually calls listeners to leave the hoax of religions and come together as one community, united solely in a love without commitment and burden. The first verse of the song says, “Took the fireworks and the vanity/The circuit board and the city streets/Shooting stars, swaying palm trees/Laid it at the arbiter’s feet”. These images are all symbolic of earlier album covers by the band. The cover of 1998’s Letting Off the Happiness featured a full page of firework designs. A mirror on a wall of intricate wallpaper was the focus of 2000’s Fevers & Mirrors, and “the vanity”, another word for mirror, is representative of that. The “circuit board” is from the cover of 2005’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn which features a design made up of binary code. The cover of I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, also released in 2005, is a patchwork design of townhouses in New York City which is what “the city streets” refers to. Lastly, “Shooting stars, swaying palm trees” is a reference to the image of pyramids, surrounded by palm trees, underneath a shooting star from the cover of Cassadaga, released in 2007 (ConorOberst.com). The last line mentions an “arbiter.” An arbiter is defined as “a person who has judgment and is considered authoritative” (Mirriam Webster). In Psalm 62:11, God is called “the Impartial Arbiter of Destiny (McFayden).” Oberst took all his albums, which amount to his life’s work, and presented them to God for judgment.
The second verse begins with the lyrics, “If I could change my mind, change the paradigm.” A paradigm is a standard or an ideal (Mirriam Webster) and is used in this context to describe the ideals and set forms of religious traditions and beliefs. Oberst is saying that if he could change these set models of religious tradition that never seem right to him, or perhaps even change himself and the way he regards them, then he could finally comes to terms with his faith and be part of a religious community. The lyrics continue, “Prepare myself for another life/Forgive myself for the many times/I was cruel to something helpless and weak.” The other life that Oberst is preparing himself for is the afterlife. In the Catholic religion the way to prepare yourself for the afterlife, is to confess your sins, preform penance, and be forgiven. In fact, Last Rites, one of the seven sacraments, are given to dying people to let them have confession and be forgiven one last time (Wise Geek). Oberst is sayings he would try to be a good Catholic and try to get into heaven if he thought the process to do so that the Catholics preach is true, or if he even thought it was worth it. During an interview with the Montreal Mirror in 2005, Oberst said, “These ideas of God and afterlife and sin seem very abstract, but they're part of how I grew up, so inevitably they affect the way I think.” This quote shows how unsure he is about religion, and how he as changed religions many times and still doesn’t know exactly what he believes. The entire verse is contemplative. Oberst is trying to figure out if his lack of faith is due to some fault of his own. The chorus repeats three times over the course of the song, each time with a slight variation that mirrors the singer’s growth. The first chorus goes, “But here it come, that heavy love/I’m never gonna move it alone/Here it come, that heavy love/Tag it on a tenement wall/Here it come that heavy love, someone gotta share in the load/Oh here it come, that heavy love/I’m never gonna move it alone.” The “heavy love” being referred to is the overwhelming need Oberst has to find meaning in life and find love and forgiveness. The love is heavy because it is a burden and consumes a person. Earlier in his life, he only attributed these things with religion and the salvation that it grants. He sings, “Someone’s gotta share in the load,” and he believes that God is the only person this could possibly be. It is not until later in life, and later in the song, that he realizes he can move, or remove, this heavy love from his back, in other ways. The line “Tag it on a tenement wall” is about how religious symbols like crosses or Bible passages are not just found in beautiful or highclass places; they can be found as graffiti on the walls of the slums. Everywhere he turns, he is surrounded by people inspired by religion. This entire chorus is in first person and is symbolic of Oberst blaming himself, and his sins, for being the reason why he could not ever fit in with a religious community. He felt alone and therefore was searching for someone to help him, because he is “never gonna move it alone.” When he says this during the first chorus it sounds hopeless and weak, as if he has already given up. The third verse begins by describing Oberst’s Catholic upbringing. “I was dressed in white, touched by something pure/Death obsessed like a teenager/Sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar.” In Catholicism, the color white represents purity. When receiving the seven sacraments, such as Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, and even Holy Orders, participants usually wear white gowns (Bible Tools). When he says he was touched by something pure, he is referring to Chrism, the pure oil used to anoint people receiving many of the seven sacraments (Morrisroe). Oberst then says he was “death obsessed like a teenager.” In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2011 Oberst said, “I’ve always been slightly preoccupied with death or those silly big questions people will tell you to not spend your time worrying about. I guess it’s more trying to kind of enlighten myself as much as I can and know, all these perspectives that are out there or these possible meanings of things, that has always been a fascination of mine.'” All these big steps of his induction into the religious community were taking place while he was a teenager, a time when he began to be preoccupied with ideas of death and mortality. The next line mentions “piss and vinegar” which is meant to symbolize bitterness and when Oberst says he sold his “tortured youth”, and he means he wasted his early life being bitter towards most people around him and angry at God for not giving him straight answers. His anger towards God becomes even more evident in the next few lines of the song. “I’m still angry with no reason to be/At the architect who imagines/For the everyman, blessed Sisyphus.” The architect he is talking about is God. In Institutes of the Christian Religion, written in 1536, by John Calvin, a famous protestant reformer, he calls God “The Divine Architect” and refers to God’s work as “Architecture of the Universe.” This is because God is thought to have designed and created the entire universe. Oberst is angry with God for imagining and then making a world where everyone is forced to live like Sisyphus, a character from Greek mythology. Sisyphus was tortured by having to roll a giant boulder up a mountain, only to have to start over again because it rolls back down for all of eternity (Camus). Oberst equates Sisyphus’ frustration to the frustration he feels in trying to find a religion he truly believes in. Every time he discovers one, he finds something that feels fake or unholy to him. In an interview with the Paste Magazine in 2008, Oberst said, “I guess I’m just conflicted. I mean, I want to find something like that. Badly. But in all the forms where it’s been offered to me, they seem fraudulent, you know? … And not that I’m an expert on all these religions, but what I know about all the other major religions kind of all just fall a little flat in their–I guess, just in their kind of narrow-mindedness. I feel like there’s something much more basic than what all these people are worried about.” In the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, the author, Albert Cadmus, talks about Absurdism, which is “man’s search for meaning in a meaningless world.” This belief seems to align perfectly with Conor Oberst’s beliefs, especially in this song. He searches tirelessly for meaning, or religion, but deep down he knows there is no correct religion. The last line of the verse, “Slipping steadily into madness, now that’s the only place to be free.” This obviously refers back to the madness which befell Sisyphus due to his eternal punishment, but more so, it is Oberst’s belief that the only way to be free of the worries of no salvation or religious comfort is if you let go, and go mad. The madness he refers to is most likely drug use. Oberst has said that he uses drugs as an escape from his worries and that when he is sober, he becomes terrified of the overwhelming truth of the evil in world.
This is the second time the chorus appears, with a few differences from the first version. “But here it come, that heavy love/You’re never gonna move it alone/Here it come that heavy love/Tattooed on a criminal’s arm/Here it come, that heavy love/Someone gotta share in the load/Oh, Here it come, that heavy love/You’re never gonna move it alone.” The line that goes, “Tattooed on a criminal’s arm,” coincides with the line about graffiti in the previous chorus. The same religious imagery is often found as tattoos on many people, even criminals in jail and is therefore inescapable. In this chorus, Oberst has changed all the first person words to second person. He has still not found anything to believe in. Oberst said in an interview that he was “going through a period of intense atheism, but now I find myself going back and forth between feeling like there are things at work besides biology, and feeling like it's complete nonsense.” (Montreal Mirror) During his times of atheism, he would preach it to everyone through rhetoric and song. When he uses words like “you’re”, he is telling other people, as though it is a fact, that if he can’t move that heavy love, or find faith in religion, than it must not exist. This period of his life when he was putting down other religions and their beliefs is one of the times Oberst was “Cruel to something helpless and weak” that he wishes he could forgive himself for.
The bridge of the song is Oberst singing “No I don’t wanna play/It’s a shell game.” A shell game is a type of thimblerig game where a small ball is hidden underneath three small cups and the cups are then shuffled. The player must pick the cup they think that the ball is under. The game is actually a fraud because the person doing the swindling will have taken out the ball or hidden it so that the player will always lose (Cup & Ball Trick). Oberst is saying that he no longer wants to play the shell game of choosing a religion. He believes God is tricking and cheating him because religion itself is a hoax and there is no hidden truth or salvation beneath any of the “cups” or different worldly religions.
The fourth verse begins with “Distorted sounds on oscilloscopes/distorted facts, I could never cope.” An oscilloscope is a machine that measures and displays sounds waves. It is a device that Oberst, being a musician and musical technician has become very familiar with. The machines specifically show the distortion of sound waves (Mirriam Webster). Because sound waves are used to transfer messages, if these waves are distorted, the message will become unclear. The lyrics are about how Oberst has received many messages through so many mediums in his life about religion and spirituality, but they were all distorted and therefore left him alone, and unable to cope with his life’s purpose. The next stanza is, “My private life is an inside joke/No one will explain it to me.” These words continue with the themes of Oberst feeling like everyone else is in on a big secret, but God is ignoring his pleas to understand it. He feels left out and alone. The last line of the verse is a moment of epiphany for the singer. He sings “We’ll be everything that we ever need” This is the first time Oberst uses the word “we” and it is meant to show that he finally realized he is not alone in his troubles because many other people question their faith. He wants everyone to know that, unlike what they have been told, they do not need God and religion, but only the love of one another for life to be worth living. The next part of the song, when Oberst chants, “Everyone on the count of three/All together now,” is an impassioned cry for anyone who has ever felt at a loss or confused in their faith to be released from its shackles. Now the lyrics of the chorus have become, “Here it come, that heavy love/We’re never gonna move it alone/Here it come, that heavy love/Playing as the cylinder rolls/Here it come, that heavy love/I only want to share in the load/Oh, here it come, that heavy love/I’m never gonna move it alone.” This is also the first time Oberst uses the term “we” in the chorus. He believes if they all stand together, they can finally move the “heavy love” that has been weighing them down for so long, and none of them will ever feel alone in the universe again. Conor Oberst uses poetry and heavy symbolism in the song Shell Games to describe his lifelong quest to find meaning in life through religion; from his childhood at a Catholic School being taught distorted messages, to his dark, death obsessed teenage years where he felt a complete disconnect and preached atheism, to the present. He has tried to be accepting towards, and even a part of many different religious societies, but they have all had flaws and felt false to him. In the song Four Winds off of 2007’s Cassadaga Oberst sings “The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, The Quran is mute/If you burned them all together, you’d get close to the truth.” He thinks that all religions are focusing on their differences, instead of their overall message of love of your fellow human being. He once said, “I find it really shocking that two groups that are, from an outsider’s perspective, almost identical–you know, Shiites and Sunnis, or Catholics and Protestants–can actually kill each other over these minor details. And dogma and all that stuff, to me it’s anti- whatever I would consider god-like. Which is, I think, a connectedness and an all-encompassing sort of love for things. I suppose that’s a lot of what Buddhism is, but I haven’t found anything that really hits the mark for me (Jackson).” By the end of the song, he has finally come to the realization that organized religion is a sham and holds no real truth or salvation. He believes that all people should release themselves from the burden of “heavy love” that makes happiness and peace so hard to obtain. He begs the lost and faithless people of the world to unite together and form their own community based on one pure ideal: all they really need in life is the unconditional, light love of one another.