Breakerfall. Is it...
HeavyHands
Posts: 2,130
...actually another song about surfing?
After 10 years of listening to this song it finally just occurred to me that eV may have been using another bit of his classic wordplay.
"Breakerfall" was originally titled (in a press release about Binaural's song listing) "Break Her Fall," if I'm not mistaken. This title invokes some specific imagery about a woman or girl being involved in some sort of conflicted environment, to me, and implies nothing about surfing.
Restating the title of the song to be "Breaker fall" may be a more correct interpretation, however. A 'breaker' being defined by Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/breaker) as:
–noun
1. a person or thing that breaks.
2. a wave that breaks or dashes into foam.
3. etc...
So then the song title becomes about the fall of a wave.
Lyrics below from (http://www.pearljam.com/song/breakerfall):
There's a girl on a ledge, who's got nowhere to turn
She's on the edge of a surfboard, not unlike being on the ledge of a cliff or building or at a spiritual or emotional jumping-off point.
Because all the love that she had was just wood that she burned
Dumb perhaps, but camping overnight on the beach might induce one to want to have a campfire and burn wood.
Now her life is on fire, it's no one's concern
She loves surfing. She feels alive when she does it. She has to focus so she cares about nothing or no one else.
Anyone else?
After 10 years of listening to this song it finally just occurred to me that eV may have been using another bit of his classic wordplay.
"Breakerfall" was originally titled (in a press release about Binaural's song listing) "Break Her Fall," if I'm not mistaken. This title invokes some specific imagery about a woman or girl being involved in some sort of conflicted environment, to me, and implies nothing about surfing.
Restating the title of the song to be "Breaker fall" may be a more correct interpretation, however. A 'breaker' being defined by Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/breaker) as:
–noun
1. a person or thing that breaks.
2. a wave that breaks or dashes into foam.
3. etc...
So then the song title becomes about the fall of a wave.
Lyrics below from (http://www.pearljam.com/song/breakerfall):
There's a girl on a ledge, who's got nowhere to turn
She's on the edge of a surfboard, not unlike being on the ledge of a cliff or building or at a spiritual or emotional jumping-off point.
Because all the love that she had was just wood that she burned
Dumb perhaps, but camping overnight on the beach might induce one to want to have a campfire and burn wood.
Now her life is on fire, it's no one's concern
She loves surfing. She feels alive when she does it. She has to focus so she cares about nothing or no one else.
Anyone else?
"A lot more people are capable of being big out there that just don't give themselves a chance." -Stone Gossard
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Personally, I am really bad at determining lyrics, so I try not to most of the time. I just try to enjoy the songs and let them mean whatever they mean to me. Most of the time I am wrong so I try not to give my 2 cents on the matter.
However, I just always thought this song was about catching someone (her) from doing something bad or wrong and being there just in time to help...
But knowing the boys, I could be way off and it could be about something completely different.
Yes. I thought this too. Until the phrasing hit me in a different way and I started thinking about the proper title of the song. Breaker is just an odd word. It stands out as one you don't hear every day. And because it has this literal meaning that relates to waves it occurred to me that eV could simply be enjoying the flexibility of linguistics. It's ability to carry multiple meanings that are both relevant.
I know there are a few songs that he admits to not having any meaning at all. It can mean whatever they want to each person.
I don't personally think Breakerfall is about surfing, but I guess he is the only one who really does know... I've always assumed he changed the title just to add a bit of artistic ambiguity (as with "Pry, to" and any number of others that escape me just now), but it could be that it appealed to him just because of the wave reference.
^^^Probably this^^^ skippybrew you once again prove that people wearing ascots and nautical hats have superior perspective and insight. Huzzah! to you, sir.
Also this^^^
The man is gifted.