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You barely are blinking
Wagging your face around
When'd this just become a mortal home? Bon Iver & St. Vincent – Rosyln
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Before she hits the water she is not blinking, likely consumed by contemplation, and is rapidly shaking her head, described here as a wag, or a single rapid movement from side to side, as if to express the tortured thoughts and feelings of the conclusion which lies in the third line, ‘when did this just become a mortal home’, where mortal- of a human being, subject to death. In the third line she is basically saying ‘when did life become so finite and fragile’?

Bella Swan, from the Twilight trilogy

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And you might have to plan for the weekend wars MGMT – Weekend Wars
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If you’re bored the weekend wars (partying, drugs, alcohol etc.) are likely inevitable

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Adam
8 years

People are sick of the fucked up cage of the world so they always end up going back to drugs.

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But it's difficult to win unless you're bored MGMT – Weekend Wars
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It’s difficult to find the motivation and ambition to win unless you’re bored; winning is reserved for people that just want to win because they have nothing else to do (it’s really not that important)

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02aed3592e53336aa01f2e40a5d8747e

100

10 months

I don’t think he’s even saying the word bored. I think he’s saying the word bold. You won’t win unless you’re bold enough to try makes a lot more sense than you’ll only win if you’re bored.

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Ada143869b1e58bf44481538ce4896c2

107

3 years

It might even be the reverse. You have to put away the things that you waste time on, the things we believe we enjoy, but serve no constructive purpose. You need to make yourself bored so that you can find interest in your work. There is way too much technology/distractions in our modern lives. If you had a choice between self-improvement and doing recreational drugs and playing games. You know what you’d choose.

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Marc Licciardi
4 years

Are these from the liner notes or is possible he says “bold.”

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Christ is cursed of fathers and martyrs MGMT – Weekend Wars
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Religion is cursed because it is dominated by fathers (preachers, people that say what is right) and martyrs (people that are just trying to die for a cause)

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Default_avatar_100

192

7 years

A martyr is not simply someone who is trying to die. A martyr is someone who is killed because of their religious views. Someone who is a witness to faith.

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Jrlbs
7 years

This is a complex line about religion and division. We are all for Christ and his cause of light and love, but in his name the fathers (of the church) make martyrs of those with different beliefs. The next line about splitting hairs with a knife refers to the violence that is enacted to split the thin lines between us all who are actually for the same cause.

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Try to break my heart, I'll drive to Arizona
It might take a hundred years to grow an arm
I'll sit and listen to the sound of sand and cold MGMT – Weekend Wars
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If you try and break his heart he’ll simply isolate himself from everybody in a desert.

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Shaedon Stevens
7 years

He has extremely unhealthy coping methods and finds himself overreacting simply to cope with simple things such as a relationship going south

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Jrlbs
7 years

Going back to the theme of escaping to a world of less? As he listens to the simple sound of sand and cold, he can(successfully now?) amplify the sound of light and love. Outside a heartbreaking society in which he is no longer a player, all that remains are his predictions for how it all turns out. The line about taking a hundred years to grow an arm exemplifies the slower pace of this desert/shore, and it could be referring to his ability to manipulate (using his arm), or to the slow-growing arm of a psychoactive cactai.

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09020af039a220b417a98e6b923c7b88

134

10 years

“it might take a hundred years to grow an arm” is a reference to how long it takes Saguaro cacti ( commonly found in the AZ desert) to grow arms. They start to grow at ~75 years old. http://www.desertmuseum.org/center/edu/docs/1-2_SaguaroTales_lifeCycle.pdf

its pretty common if you grow up in the southwest tho to learn that they grow arms at 100 years old

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F81e51d9eddf58e171a5f1175e94e1f0

791

10 years

If you try to break his heart, he’ll drive to Arizona where he’ll be in a slump. It will take an arm and a leg to get back on track. It might take a hundred years just to grow an arm so instead he’ll just forget about things and isolate himself.

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And I don't have to love or think too much MGMT – Weekend Wars
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He doesn’t have to have strong emotions or take things seriously enough to analyze them anymore. Likely relating to the depression he referenced in the second and third line (he’s recovered from it or at least learned his lesson)

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Jrlbs
7 years

He has learned to survive on his own, no longer crippled by his loving empathy for the rest of the world and thoughts of understanding and changing it.

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I was too lazy to bathe
Or paint or write or try to make a change MGMT – Weekend Wars
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Likely, he was depressed; too depressed to express himself (which, after all, is what he does for a living) or even bathe.

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Fc7a55fe65cd2ff741ddcd038548f70d

165

8 years

too

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Bobby
9 years

Was I always too lazy to bathe?

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And how you suffered for your sanity Don McLean – Vincent (Starry Starry Night)
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Don McLean, like many others now, recognized the disease, most likely schizophrenia, that affected both Vincent, and later his brother Theo, as the cause for his troubled life.

McClean is saying that, far from the insanity that van Gogh is often accused of, he was strikingly sane because he saw the truth of humanity… but it was a dark truth that caused a lot of suffering.

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You took your life, as lovers often do Don McLean – Vincent (Starry Starry Night)
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Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the stomach and passed away two days later, with his brother Theo at his side.

In describing van Gogh’s suicide as something lovers do, McLean might be talking about van Gogh’s relationship with life – passionate and dedicated love that simply wasn’t meant to be, similar to the tragedy in Romeo and Juliette.

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E3ce5dd515f299b0bf8ba918de226755

153

4 years

Could also be dying to an old way of life and being reborn anew, to a new way of life. A spiritual death of the old you to make way for the spiritual “awakening” of the new…the true. The new, true you.
(It even rhymes.)

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We used to hide out and try to find ourselves Dylan Owen – The Book Report
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When they were kids they would go off by themselves and try to discover who they truly were (likely by exploring different ideas or events)

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