Lyric Analysis: Parakeet
Tad Schirz
look at the song. Wow. I really missed a key metaphor in the last
verse of the song. Here are the lines I'm thinking of. They are the
first line in each of verses one, two and three:
1 You wake up in the morning and fall out of bed...
2 A broken wrist, an accident...
3 The tectonic dispatcher shifts to smooth the ocean floor...
I tend to key-in on images, and there is one here that links these 3
lines, although it does so in a dreamy, symbolic kind of way. I wonder
if anyone else sees or feels it...?
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Akeller1862
> Awhile back we got into discussing Parakeet. I had to take a closer
> look at the song. Wow. I really missed a key metaphor in the last
> verse of the song. Here are the lines I'm thinking of. They are the
> first line in each of verses one, two and three:
>
> 1 You wake up in the morning and fall out of bed...
>
> 2 A broken wrist, an accident...
>
> 3 The tectonic dispatcher shifts to smooth the ocean floor...
>
> I tend to key-in on images, and there is one here that links these 3
> lines, although it does so in a dreamy, symbolic kind of way. I wonder
> if anyone else sees or feels it...?
>
first line is about him unwillingly staying with the band for a certian
time, tired, unhappy. The second line probably refers to his own
accident. The third is about him leaving, I'm pretty sure, although I'm
not sure how it connects to that get. I'll get back to you.
A" cinnamon "keller
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Tad Schirz
"Chris [Steve] Piuma, etc." <fl...@flim.com> wrote:
> In article <7nb386$2rn$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Tad Schirz
> <just...@execpc.com> wrote:
> > 1 You wake up in the morning and fall out of bed...
>
> I fell by your bed once.
> I didn't want to tell you...
>
> --
> Chris [Steve] Piuma, etc.
>
Clever as a cat, as usual. You should keep yourself in between the
cages ;)
Tad Schirz
wrote:
> > Awhile back we got into discussing Parakeet. I had to take a closer
> > look at the song. Wow. I really missed a key metaphor in the last
> > verse of the song. Here are the lines I'm thinking of. They are
the
> > first line in each of verses one, two and three:
> >
> >
> >
> > 3 The tectonic dispatcher shifts to smooth the ocean floor...
> >
> > I tend to key-in on images, and there is one here that links these 3
> > lines, although it does so in a dreamy, symbolic kind of way. I
wonder
> > if anyone else sees or feels it...?
> >
> I do. I always saw the song as being about Bill on some levels and the
> first line is about him unwillingly staying with the band for a
certian
> time, tired, unhappy. The second line probably refers to his own
> accident. The third is about him leaving, I'm pretty sure, although
I'm
> not sure how it connects to that get. I'll get back to you.
>
> A" cinnamon "keller
I think you are on to something with the Bill theory. It may indeed be
underlying the whole thing.
But I see real beauty in the words on the page...images...feelings...the
connections (literal and metaphoric) between humans, animals, nature.
IMO if you kind of let your mind go, think of a broken wrist, hitting
the floor with your hand...the snapping of bone, then take another look
at line 3...I think a comparison really jumps out.
I'll follow up more specifically, but I kind of cringe at posting
something that's so wonderful to discover on your own.
Tad, in Wisconsin (where mean sons of football coaches fry parrots in
the microwave)
------
Joey Odorisio
> nature, but I always saw the parakeet as a metaphor for a person. For
> example, the person is not really colored "bitter lime". The person
> *is* bitter. The lime is just added as sort of a thing to spice up the
> image. [And does anyone think that that's a great piece of wordplay -
> because limes *are* bitter, and it could be taste as well as color?
> Ron? Anyone?]
Wow, speaking of misheard lyrics...even though we got the Up lyrics, I
thought the line was "whose color inner lies".
--
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Akeller1862
> In article <240719991325439515%fl...@flim.com>,
> "Chris [Steve] Piuma, etc." <fl...@flim.com> wrote:
> > In article <7nb386$2rn$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Tad Schirz
> > <just...@execpc.com> wrote:
> >
> > I didn't want to tell you...
> >
> >
> cages ;)
>
>
Of the green light room...
Akeller1862
> I think you are on to something with the Bill theory. It may indeed be
> underlying the whole thing.
>
> But I see real beauty in the words on the page...images...feelings...the
> connections (literal and metaphoric) between humans, animals, nature.
>
I suppose parts of the song could show connections with humans and
nature, but I always saw the parakeet as a metaphor for a person. For
example, the person is not really colored "bitter lime". The person
*is* bitter. The lime is just added as sort of a thing to spice up the
image. [And does anyone think that that's a great piece of wordplay -
because limes *are* bitter, and it could be taste as well as color?
Ron? Anyone?]
> IMO if you kind of let your mind go, think of a broken wrist, hitting
> the floor with your hand...the snapping of bone, then take another look
> at line 3...I think a comparison really jumps out.
>
I *have* seen this scene literally, and later lines also involves
healing. But, IMHO, if you "let your mind go" the song uses the wrist
more as a metaphor. When you focus on the song less literally, you can
see that the images slowly build to tell a story that is almost
dreamlike in its telling.
Jennie Want
"The sunspot flares of the early 90s ... "
= Out of Time (91) and esp. AFTP (92).
krystin
>
>"The sunspot flares of the early 90s ... "
>
>= Out of Time (91) and esp. AFTP (92).
Nope, that's what I thought it referred to too.
AHaigh9877
Because that would be rubbish wouldn't it.
...but yes, I did think of that too.
ALi
Akeller1862
<Jenni...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Am I the only one to have this thought?
>
> "The sunspot flares of the early 90s ... "
>
> = Out of Time (91) and esp. AFTP (92).
>
>
A" cinnamon "keller
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Robert Andrews
[ January 19, 1999 ]
> Agreement [with initial confusion]... it had me completely clueless as
> well. But I've come up
> with some sort of interpretation - perhaps a slightly arrogant and
> equally clueless one, seeing as though I'm going to say it is, in a
> way, about Bill.
>
> A little like 'Falls to Climb,' I think there is some kind of guilt
> at a situation the writer thinks he may have provoked, centering
> around the dead-bird-who-can't-fly-away metaphor...
>
> "Mean cats eat parakeets."
> Were the writer and his friends responsible for crippling this
> person?
>
> "And greasy window slide, open for the parakeet who's coloured bitter
> lime."
> This person is off-colour, unhappy, and looking for a way out, to fly
> out of the rock-music-celebrity room, to "lift into your dreams" of a
> more peacfeul life.
>
> "You can barely breathe."
> That rock-music-celebrity room makes the person - who is not happy
> with attention, travelling and so on - claustrophobic. Must get out.
>
> "You fold the leavings of your past, no-one knows you're gone."
> Well, he was 'only the drummer.' Because of the nature of what he
> wanted to get away from, would anyone care, and wouldn't it, in fact,
> be better if those attention-givers didn't care and left him alone as
> he wanted?
>
> "The sunspot flares of the early nineties light up your wings."
> Those bright, big musical hits and good, megapopular times were,
> perhaps, on reflection, not to happy for this person, only
> highLIGHTing the means by which he wants to escape.
>
> "Warm Pacific breeze, where mean cats chew on licorice and cannot
> climb the trees."
> A Hawaii setting in 1997, the scene of, perhaps, most unhappiness. If
> the other cats feel guilty of putting him through that unhappiness,
> then they are not able to carry on for a moment from the guilt of
> realisation. That environment leading to...
>
> "The tectonic dispatcher shifts to smooth the ocean floor."
> Despite plate tectonics being a destructive force, causing
> earthquakes along fault-lines, the head that they brought things to
> here has smoothed things over for a new beginning. When those
> continental plates rub together just like tensions and differences in
> a band, something errupts, but the new geography created from those
> forces, the new landscape paves the way for something new, and a
> happier parakeet, having had his place "flattened out to warmer
> winds." Isn't that a great image? R.E.M.'s career-and-friendship
> situation as a geographical element which is reshaped?
>
> So, I'll stop now. I don't know whether this interpretation is
> correct or not, but, as I've read it, I think the writing (the way
> in which he conveys that story of an uncomfortable person, and the
> environment reshaping the whole situation, entirely as an
> environmental song) is great. It's a pretty surreal song.
Helen Toland had an extra few good points...
[ January 20, 1999 ]
> At last Parakeet is beginning to make some sense in my head. Rob, you're
> a genius! I really like
> the explaination that it could be about Bill, it really ties in well.
> I like the whole idea that it could also be music industry "fat cats'
> who created the disillusionment which led to his decision to leave. I
> know this may be taking it too far but "A broken wrist" again is an injury
> which would leave a drummer disabled, "an accident" could this be
> referring to the illness that plagued Bill during the monster tour? "You
> know that somethings wrong", Didnt Bill claim to have been unhappy for a
> while before Bertis made him confront the reat of the band?
--
Rob Andrews
mean cats eat parakeets
http://athens.home.ml.org
Tad Schirz
missed. Here it is.
The third verse evokes the image of an earthquake, triggered by
"the tectonic dispatcher shifts..." I think the image of tectonic
plates shifting under the earth is meant to compare to the earlier image
of bones breaking in the wrist.
The phrase "tectonic dispatcher" is also intriguing. Originally I
thought of this was meant to somehow personify a geologic function. But
'dispatcher' also has the connotation of communicating over the
airwaves. Now I wonder if the phrase might allude to the belief that
animals, especially birds, sense earthquakes before humans.
Tad.
flaky...@my-deja.com
I think you guys are probably right (or close to it) with the Bill
thing, but I've always had a different interpretation. Since the first
time I heard it, that song has reminded me of Michael Hutchence. I know
he and Stipe weren't particularly close or anything, but I also know
that the members of R.E.M. and the members of U2 all held an "Irish
wake" right after his death, so that's proof that it was at least on
Stipe's mind.
I think the "mean cat" is Bob Geldof. For those who don't know the
background, Geldof and Michael Hutchence had a long standing, very
BITTER feud over Geldof's children with Michael's girlfriend Paula. The
night he killed himself Michael had a terrible fight with Geldof over
the phone. Before he killed himself, he broke his hand by punching the
wall or floor.
The song alludes to Australia, Michael was Australian and killed himself
there (though in Sidney, not Brisbane). I think the "bitter lime" is
like others have said, a reference to a "bitter" person or situation.
The "sunspot flares of the early nineties" could be alluding to INXS's
hits of that time (Suicide Blonde is the only one I can think of right
now, but I have a feeling there were others).
Also consider the first verse: "mean cats eat parakeets and this one's
nearly dead. You dearly wish the wind would shift and greasy windows
slide. Open for the parakeet who's colored bitter lime." That seems to
me to be about a person who's dearly wishing his situation would change,
because it is killing him. He only see's one solution out, out the open
window (possible metaphor for suicide?).
also "you fold the leavings of your past, no one knows you're gone"
could be referring to the fact that INXS hadn't had a big commercial hit
in a while, and that Michael could have been thinking that no one (fans,
the general public) would miss him, etc, etc, etc.
I admit I cannot really explain the last three verses, as they seem to
refer to someone who's found a way out of his situation. A positive way,
that is. I suppose the "Buddhas tend to mending wrists" and "the warm
Pacific breeze where mean cats chew on licorice and cannot climb the
trees" could refer to Heaven/Nirvana/Where ever, where one feels no
pain, and in my interpretation Bob Geldof (the mean cat) can no longer
hurt one. But that would be kind of like Stipe implying that suicide is
a positive option in an impossible situation, but I really, really don't
think he'd do that. Perhaps by opening the window, and starting to
breathe, he (Stipe) is expressing his wish that the subject would take a
clear headed look at the situation, and metaphorically count to ten, and
realize it's not the end of the world. Or something.
Like I said at the beginning, you guys are probably right about it being
about Bill.
Ta.
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MBCE99
what stipe said about it at Storytellers?
MR.weiRD
Ze Monsta
>i guess it's not any fun to just follow
>what stipe said about it at Storytellers?
:o) I wanna see that again! It was my favourite part of the first version of
Storytellers!!
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Jennie Want
> what stipe said about it at Storytellers?
What *did* he say? Everyone keeps going on about this storytellers thing. I
heard about when it was on, but I think the schedules in Europe are
different to U.S. so I didn't get to see it.
Akeller1862
> i guess it's not any fun to just follow
> what stipe said about it at Storytellers?
>
song, I just realized."?
Ze Monsta
>> what stipe said about it at Storytellers?
>>
>But didn't he say after that "That didn't have much to do with the
>song, I just realized."?
Yeah, well.... I guess he, in the big picture, had explained why he used
'parakeet' and not, say 'pigeon.'