Lyric Interpretations

[zyx987]

What are your interpretations of some MMJ songs?

[MMJ_fanatic]

good question zyx and one that has been posed in many different ways throughout the forum.   I look at the songs as snapshots of a life at all of its various moments and how they have left their mark on the person.  this is a vast generalization of course but you'll probably shortly see people telling you their thoughts on individual tracks (based on how they struck that individual)

[zyx987]

I would really like to know thoughts on the song Gideon? Is it pro-religion or anti-religion? I can't really decide. I saw MMJ on Austin City Limits, and at the end Jim talks about religion but i didnt really comprehend it. I love this band's music but i do not know a whole lot about the band itslelf and where Jim's lyrics come from.

[tomEisenbraun]

i think it's definitely not anti-religion. anti-soul-sucking-organized religion, i think would stand a case here. but not anti-religion.

[BH]

I have no idea really, but I have always at least contemplated the following thoughts.....

Gideon was a character in the bible that led a surprise physchological war against the menonites.  Early on in Gideon's life God questioned his faith.  Should we just follow blindly into battle and kill for God?

Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young.

You Animal

I tend to think the song had Bush in mind to some extent.

Come down of the wall.  

Is Jim asking us to chose sides?  Make a difference?

What does this remind you of?
 
Any war?  It seems more have died over religion than anything else.  Ironic.

I realize this is kind of rambling giberish.  Sorry.  It's definately a thought provoking song.

[zyx987]

I don't think that is gibberish at all. I think your really goin somewhere with that. Maybe the song is just about how stupid it is with all the war now (and in the past) over religion, and that religion shouldn't be about that. It should be about good, not evil. Nothing is worth killing for or dying from.

[evilPaauwe]

I have no idea really, but I have always at least contemplated the following thoughts.....

Gideon was a character in the bible that led a surprise physchological war against the menonites.  Early on in Gideon's life God questioned his faith.  Should we just follow blindly into battle and kill for God?

Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young.

You Animal

I tend to think the song had Bush in mind to some extent.

Come down of the wall.  

Is Jim asking us to chose sides?  Make a difference?

What does this remind you of?

Any war?  It seems more have died over religion than anything else.  Ironic.

I realize this is kind of rambling giberish.  Sorry.  It's definately a thought provoking song.

i love you for that.

i've probably contemplated on "golden" the most and have honestly come up with very little.

[tomEisenbraun]

okay, here's what i'm learning more and more about lyrics. you know how when sometimes your describing something and you don't have the words to say it so you kind of use hand motions and general terms to kind of help it along and the person you're in the process of describing it to finally understands it? that's what lyrics are.

Golden was written about something. Jim probably has a definite picture in his head of certain bars and certain stretches of road, but we have absolutely no need to see them. In fact, it would serve us much better to never even try to. because what that song means to you certainly has something to do with the original intent, but in the end, it's kind of like the hands-waving business. Jim has something he wants to convey, and we've certainly gotten it. not particularly verbatim, i wouldn't suppose, but in our own special ways.

Golden is about true love. knowing how easy it is to get lost, because you've done it before ("Bear"-style) and now you know where the truth lies, and what's truly what you ought to keep in mind. that love you know that is so familiar.

and you, you always told me
no matter how long it holds me
if it falls apart or makes us millionaires....
you'll be right here forever
we'll go through this thing together
and on Heaven's golden shores we'll lay our heads...

that is completely beautiful, because it's not a selfish love in any manner, it's a "hey, we can make it babe. it just takes some time and dedication. but i won't leave your side, no matter how long it takes to see the other side." that's beautiful.



and Gideon. I hate reading into politics with it, because it's written half about a parrot that Jim heard about on NPR and half about the state of organized religion in the world we're in now. take that how you will. sometimes ridiculous things inspire (or not so ridiculous things) and you really just wind up coming up with something absolutely powerful. the most powerful line in that song is the final "come on!" . if that didn't give you goosebumps the first time you ever heard it, you may not have a soul.

all that to say, i dunno. what a song makes you feel is very valid. i'd love to hear that from all of you. but a line by line dissection is, in my opinion (and that's just my opinion, it will certainly fail often), missing the point. they're only part of the picture, and quite important. thing is, the part of the song that makes Gideon for me is during the second scream after the final "come on!" where the lead guitar slides up an octave on the rhythm part. right at 2:19. that's the point in that song at which everything aorund me drops out of sight and i am literally forced to shut my eyes and air guitar and seriously lose concept of space and time. just for those three notes.

it's like Lay Low. I have no idea what it's about, but it moves me. if you are not a changed person after the end of your first time hearing that song, you need to listen again.

i don't know what I'm saying. well i do, i just don't know how to convey it properly. you know what i'm saying? how your interpretation of the song ought to be something personal, and not a line by line dissection. and how what Jim was saying ought not to be the be-all, end-all of what the song is. he meant what he meant, but he created the music in order that we might feel it, too. and in us feeling it, we bring an enitre new meaning to song. not one that invalidates what he felt, or what anyone else feels, but one that expands what it means. we all have a personal interpretation. i'm proud of Jim for mostly keeping his own interpretations of the songs to himself, because they truly want everyone to have the music actually mean something to everyone individually, rather than play guessing games as to what and/or who they're about.

i hope you understand what i meant. and i'm sorry if i'm kind of on edge. i just watched the first half of Rock Star (the one with Mark Wahlberg) and that movie pisses me off so much because of what mainstream music was in the 80's and even more what it is now. that movie makes me want to make music that's true. and it makes me appreciate the Jacket and M. Ward and Dylan and Andrew Bird all so so so so so much more.

fini.

[tomEisenbraun]

I Nothing is worth killing for or dying from.

i would hope you'd have the kind of conviction in that which you believe that you would stand up and die for it.

[ali]

but what does that achieve? it proves that you as an individual hold an idea/principle/intellectual concept above the value and future potential of your own life, but what else?

[tomEisenbraun]

but would you deny something you held dear to the very core of your own being because your life depended on it? I don't think that there's any greater testament to truth than a man who would lay down his life for it. You're telling me the countless thousands of men and women who have died for their faith are fools for it because they wouldn't deny what they believed in to save their own lives? That's the definition of conviction. When you know truth so bold that your very existence cannot deny it.Those who refuse to deny the truth are the ones who guarantee it will not die that it will not die with them.

[ali]

this is a really hard thing for me to try and articulate.  i don't know if it's cultural difference, or if it's me & my background, but i personally cannot say that anything is worth killing or dying for.

first up: you say we should all have the conviction to stand up and die for what we believe in, which is a very different thing to being killed because you wouldn't deny or renounce your faith. very, very different.

when you say something is worth standing up & dying for, it is such a blanket statement, that to me, covers a lot of dangerous territory - a truth that you would never deny even to save your own life, but also a truth that you would stand up & fight against others in order to defend that faith to the death? a truth that you would kill someone to defend?  the countless thousands of people you mention who've died for their faith - they also include people who died because their faith was different to someone elses? because they felt that their faith was the "only" truth, whereas the opposition was living a lie? (there have been countless wars where both sides were simply defending their conviction that their faith was truth.)  are you talking personal truths or a particular faith being "the truth"?  

it's very difficult, as i've read a lot of things into what's been written down, and there may be things that are not intended. but from my perspective, the "countless numbers of people" bring the word martyr into my head - people who have died unjustly at the hands of others as a result of refusing to deny their faith, but there are also those who have sacrificed themselves in the name of their faith, those who have used violence against others in the name of their faith, even at the cost of their own lives... you can't just state black & white that something is worth dying for without considering the other aspects of what the statement can mean, or be taken to mean.

one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and all that. what i consider truth and what you do, are not necessarily the same, but does that make your commitment to your truth more valuable than mine because you would die for it if need be, whereas i feel that it's a waste? a waste of life, a waste of potential, a loss? an ultimate tragedy, rather than something to be held up as a paragon of the virtue of conviction?

secondly: (if we're going with the losing your life because you will not deny personal truths part)
i have beliefs (not necessarily religious ones) and i have convictions, one of those being that i value life. and that's not specifically just my life, i'm talking about human life in general.  to me the value & potential of anyone as a fellow human being is important to me, irrespective of what your personal belief system is.

i am not saying that i am weaker morally or spiritually and would deny my own personal truths if put in the situation where my life was at risk. i don't think anyone can actually say what their reaction would be in that situation.  our lives (generally speaking) are such in this day & age that we aren't in life threatening situations on a day to day basis, so i simply don't know what my reaction would be. i'm just saying i just don't know if i have a conviction that is worth dying for, and i certainly don't have a conviction that is worth killing for. i don't see that this makes me any less aware of truth, or any less attached to my convictions, than you are.

i hope this all kind of makes sense, and i hope you don't feel that i'm attacking you tom, i'm just trying to say why i think the world has a lot more grey than absolute black & white.

[tomEisenbraun]

okay, i'm two sentences in to your response, and I have to make a very quick apology and re-clarification. I most certainly did not mean the kind of "stand up and die for" thing as "go to war for your country." I don't really have an opinion either way of our war situation, and I really have no idea what a "just war" looks like.

that said, i would hope most people here believe in somehting strongly enough that they would stand strongly for it and not back down from it even under threat of their own life.

[tomEisenbraun]

and yeah, i certainly understand what you're saying. and i certainly apologize if i sounded relatively heated earlier. i had a lot of things going through my head. still do, but a lot of the heat has worn off.

i know there's a very thin line there. the difference between dying for your faith and suicide bombing for your faith. that kind of thing. endangering other lives for the sake of a truth. there's more i want to say, but i don't really know how to effectively communicate this at all at this hour (4am) and i desparately need sleep. i will certainly look at this again tomorrow, because there are things i know i still need to clarify about what i said earlier. so i'll finish all this up tomorrow.

[ali]

i hope what i wrote yesterday makes some kind of sense... it took me so long to find a way to put down all the stuff that was going through my head! and it's hard, because these are issues that i can't say i've ever really sat down & tried to work through, and they really are important things that i should think about - if only to further work out my own place in the world, my own response to what's going on in this world.

so i hope it didn't come across too attacking, the more i thought about what i felt about it, the more i felt they were things i needed to say... particularly in light of today.

can i ask why you feel you don't have an opinion either way about the war? (is this getting way way too far away from lyric interpretations? sorry people...)
 :)

[tomEisenbraun]

ah, no worries. sometimes rambles are the best way to get something figured out.

the reason i don't have an opinion on the war, is becase, regardless of how much i want to have an opinion on the war, i really don't have the ability to have an opinion on it. i mean, there are certain aspects of it that i really don't agree with, btu it's the fundamental things about anyone killing anyone, you know? the thing i disagree with most is how huge a few of our men dying is to the news over here, while the death toll on the opposite side is certainly much higher. perhaps our biggest enemy, though, is ignorance. maybe that's a little bit utopian to think about, though.

i think i still avoided answering that. but in all, i don't know everything about the war. i'm not one of the people that put us into it, and i'm not one of the people fighting it. i just know what comes through the scarce amount of information i receive about it. all that to say that i don't think I know enough about it to assert any kind of opinion about it.

[Angry Ewok]

My interpretation regarding Gideon, as posted in another thread many months ago...

Unfortunately, many people (both the young and old) choose to decide on what their Bible says about particulars without ever actually picking it up and studying it. For this reason, you may find that most self-proclaimed Christians are, in fact, not Christians - but what I call members of the ever-growing Custom-fitted Religion.

More and more people are deciding, "Hmm. This particular law of the Word doesn't really sit well with me, so I think I want my God to say it's okay to be a dickhead my entire life, so long as I say "Sorry" on my deathbed. Yea, that works for me."

And fewer and fewer people are coming to understand the teachings of Christ and what he came for. It's your typical realworld paradox that so many prejudiced, hateful people pretend to be deeply religious followers of Jesus.

In my book, Jesus clearly states to his disciples that he came here only for the sick - who he called the lost sheep. This is why I believe that, of all people, Jesus holds priority for those "on the fringe" that are cast out by society... Afterall, Jesus said it himself, it is not the healthy who need a doctor.

I think the worst part about this 'Custom Religion' thing is that the Church and its Leaders have often shown our youth that it is okay to pick-and-choose what the Bible says, because no matter what you do and who you hurt - you'll be forgiven. Just look at the number of Priests and TV Elitists (no, I didn't mean to say Evangelists) who have been caught with hookers and little choir boys...

As a Christian of 2 years, it's fucking disgusting and disheartening to see these things happening.


Does this line not sound as if its coming from the heart and soul of a present day Christian? Are not Christians feared and hated for something that we (Christians) have clearly defined as wrong? Most of us believe that this, that is, the new standards of Custom-fitted Christians, is completely wrong!

So lets back it up, I'll explain why I think this refers to the Custom-fitted Religion (and I've only used Christianity as an example because that's who I am).


Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young - as the youth is universally associated with being pure and uncorrupted. I think we all agree on that, so far...

So, what has become this religion? I'd certainly define present day organized religion as an animal, and I'd even go so far as to relate the current day Church (a social affair, as opposed to a forum of faith), as the same Church that existed during the day of the Judges (where we meet Gideon)... Corrupt.

The Book of Judges. That's what this reminds me of.


Who knows, I may be way off... It's how I've come to interpret it, though. Perhaps this song is asking for another Judge, of sorts? Someone, like Gideon, to come out of the woodwork (or off the wall, so to speak), and rescue the hearts of the young from the corruption of the Church. Someone to remind his assembly of who Gideon, that guy collecting dust in the stained glass windows, exactly was - and what he stood for.

While they're at it - go ahead and remind their assembly of who exactly that Jesus Christ guy was, too.

[MMJ_fanatic]

see there zyx--you're already up to 2 pages of opinions! ;)

[saki]

What about a lyric interpretation of "if it smashes down?"

 I really love this song lyrically and musically.  I think the song is basically about someone who is on an airplane who is afraid of flying but they eventually give up their fears and sort of accept the fact that no mattter how much they worry they have to eventually just let go.  But, I also think the airplane is a sort of metaphor for any kind of situation that you feel you are not in control of and no matter what, can't control.  So, the best option is to just to go with the flow in some sort fo Zen Buddhist manner.  This is just my opinion and I'd like to hear how other people intrepret the song.  

[BH]

What about a lyric interpretation of "if it smashes down?"

I really love this song lyrically and musically.  I think the song is basically about someone who is on an airplane who is afraid of flying but they eventually give up their fears and sort of accept the fact that no mattter how much they worry they have to eventually just let go.  But, I also think the airplane is a sort of metaphor for any kind of situation that you feel you are not in control of and no matter what, can't control.  So, the best option is to just to go with the flow in some sort fo Zen Buddhist manner.  This is just my opinion and I'd like to hear how other people intrepret the song.  

never really thought about that, cool idea!