This song is about the experience of growing up.
He starts out the song as a seventeen-year-old, the last year of childhood. He has a vague sense of a calling, but it's not clear yet - "I could hear the angels whispering." So he "wandered aimlessly" in search of it. At first he's aware of his mother's direction - "I heard my mother shouting through the fog" (with the fog being his own fuzzy perception of his place in the world) - and then in his impressionable youth he starts to be aware of other influences. I think these are his peers, at first represented by a "howling dog" (not family, but still faithful human companions), then depicted as something much wilder, "a wolf to be exact." At first he is uncomfortable with this crowd - "the sound sent shivers down my back" - but peer pressure creeps over him and he is finally "drawn into the pack." Running around like a pack of wolves represents a group of teens stirring up trouble, especially as he notes that he "lost the taste for judging right from wrong."
When he's a bit older (twenty-three, so possibly after college) he meets a girl who is also seeking her calling in life ("listening to the angels just like me"), but he realizes that she is not interested in him as he is: "She didn't seem to see [me]." So he reconsiders his lifestyle - "brushed the leaves off of my snout" - and suddenly hears the pleas of his mother again. I think "that girl go[es] shaky at the knees" when he proposes, because after that he "took her by the arm" [down the aisle?] and "settled down" and "raised our children."
He speaks of his transition into family life ("my fur has turned to skin") and confesses that he's "been quickly ushered in to a world that ... I do not know." I think that's how every new parent feels: suddenly thrown headlong into a routine that is totally unexpected. Though enamored with their new families, most still reminisce about their carefree days: "I still dream of running careless through the snow."
I have no idea what the chorus means. Don't be afraid to try new things? It is out of character for a person to wear fur, or for a river to be on fire, so maybe "making God a liar" means being something you aren't supposed to be. And perhaps he is saying to embrace it head-on, like "fuel on fire." Both the rattlesnake (chorus) and howling wolf (first verse) could represent music, and he mentions embodying them in his wild days of "join[ing] in and sing[ing] their song."
@cadences I think you nailed it. I think the chorus is about learning to accept that who you were is what made you who you are today and will always be a part of you. I think that's what it means by wearing your fur like "a river on fire" because although we mature and settle down, we can still sometimes revert to our old ways. I interpreted the "I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on a fire" line as saying that there's still a dangerous and untamable element that lives within us. The fur is still around to...
@cadences I think you nailed it. I think the chorus is about learning to accept that who you were is what made you who you are today and will always be a part of you. I think that's what it means by wearing your fur like "a river on fire" because although we mature and settle down, we can still sometimes revert to our old ways. I interpreted the "I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on a fire" line as saying that there's still a dangerous and untamable element that lives within us. The fur is still around to wear from what was learned from our wild side of life.
This song is about the experience of growing up. He starts out the song as a seventeen-year-old, the last year of childhood. He has a vague sense of a calling, but it's not clear yet - "I could hear the angels whispering." So he "wandered aimlessly" in search of it. At first he's aware of his mother's direction - "I heard my mother shouting through the fog" (with the fog being his own fuzzy perception of his place in the world) - and then in his impressionable youth he starts to be aware of other influences. I think these are his peers, at first represented by a "howling dog" (not family, but still faithful human companions), then depicted as something much wilder, "a wolf to be exact." At first he is uncomfortable with this crowd - "the sound sent shivers down my back" - but peer pressure creeps over him and he is finally "drawn into the pack." Running around like a pack of wolves represents a group of teens stirring up trouble, especially as he notes that he "lost the taste for judging right from wrong."
When he's a bit older (twenty-three, so possibly after college) he meets a girl who is also seeking her calling in life ("listening to the angels just like me"), but he realizes that she is not interested in him as he is: "She didn't seem to see [me]." So he reconsiders his lifestyle - "brushed the leaves off of my snout" - and suddenly hears the pleas of his mother again. I think "that girl go[es] shaky at the knees" when he proposes, because after that he "took her by the arm" [down the aisle?] and "settled down" and "raised our children."
He speaks of his transition into family life ("my fur has turned to skin") and confesses that he's "been quickly ushered in to a world that ... I do not know." I think that's how every new parent feels: suddenly thrown headlong into a routine that is totally unexpected. Though enamored with their new families, most still reminisce about their carefree days: "I still dream of running careless through the snow."
I have no idea what the chorus means. Don't be afraid to try new things? It is out of character for a person to wear fur, or for a river to be on fire, so maybe "making God a liar" means being something you aren't supposed to be. And perhaps he is saying to embrace it head-on, like "fuel on fire." Both the rattlesnake (chorus) and howling wolf (first verse) could represent music, and he mentions embodying them in his wild days of "join[ing] in and sing[ing] their song."
@cadences I think you nailed it. I think the chorus is about learning to accept that who you were is what made you who you are today and will always be a part of you. I think that's what it means by wearing your fur like "a river on fire" because although we mature and settle down, we can still sometimes revert to our old ways. I interpreted the "I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on a fire" line as saying that there's still a dangerous and untamable element that lives within us. The fur is still around to...
@cadences I think you nailed it. I think the chorus is about learning to accept that who you were is what made you who you are today and will always be a part of you. I think that's what it means by wearing your fur like "a river on fire" because although we mature and settle down, we can still sometimes revert to our old ways. I interpreted the "I'm a rattlesnake, babe, I'm like fuel on a fire" line as saying that there's still a dangerous and untamable element that lives within us. The fur is still around to wear from what was learned from our wild side of life.