Severed Hand lyrics / intepretations

BrainofBGA

What a f'n great song! Love listening to it especially on boots! One of the posters in AMES BROS book inspired by the song? Cant get enough of it.
What are your thoughts on the interpretation of the lyrics? Interested to hear what everyone thinks?

Big Man

It is a description of a drug related experience. psychadelic drugs, the kind that gets you on a trip, and you need to be reassured that you can get home. Heavy stuff, that lets you see dragons after three or four pills, the room widens, you get off.

I think its a great song. In the end, the character in the song gets a metaphysical connection, he realizes that human knowledge is not all there is, there is something more. ( 'a tear in everything we know' or something)


just my thoughts.

i have some problems with the title though.

any ideas?

Smarter_Than_U

To me it's a song about a man bored silly from domestication. While he wants to hold it all together (his marriage, his job, etc.), he also wants to visit other planes of existence. He gets there through drugs. Though it's not clear if he ever makes it back home from his jaunt or if he does what condition he is in.

PJ_Lukin

Here is your answer right from Ed's mouth. Listen carefully at the first 1 or 2 seconds of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZByCop6sEI

overstand

I always thought of it as a guy going off to war and leaving his wife behind...and finding a severed hand....his own! and just the trippy fuckedupness your brain goes through in a battle situation...and from being maimed...and all the time the soldier just wants to get home...and that keeps him sane..thinking about home.

...and yes i did hear ed say it was about psychotropics...so i guess my theory is shot...but that is what the song says to me and it is very powerful

SorrowDirge

This is not my write up, but the guy who wrote this interpretation is dead on. Once again, this is not my work..credit goes to Stip. Here is the link to his post http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=191890


4. Severed Hand

Eddie has said on a few occasions that Severed Hand is about psychotropic drugs, and there’s no reason to doubt him. The lyrics certainly make it seem like the song is about buying and using them. I’ve never done any so I can’t comment on whether or not he gets the experience right. The more interesting part of the song is not what the experience is like, but why he needs them in the first place, and whether not they give him what he needs.

The start of the song has a wonderfully powerful build, and Eddie’s vocals have a vaguely ominous and sinister quality to them that provides a nice compliment. For whatever reason, the singer cannot stay in his vacuum. He’s exposed and vulnerable. He sees too clearly and knows too much for that to work, and he cannot cope with it. At least not yet. He needs help, and is looking for mind-altering drugs to provide it. What is clear right off the back is that the singer is the one without power in this relationship, confronting a gatekeeper who holds the secrets to the salvation he craves. It’s also made clear right off the bat that this is a journey the singer has to make on his own. His woman has to be left behind, unceremoniously dumped onto the concrete floor. But the singer is so desperate for some kind of escape he has no problem with the deal. This is a decision he will come to regret later in the record. One of the messages to take away from Pearl Jam is that salvation and peace (inner and world) cannot be accomplished without others.

The falling down chorus is my favorite part of the song, and some of my favorite lyrics on the entire record. It’s meant to bring the listener back to comatose. He has no fear except for falling, which is to say failure and damnation. But another way to think about this is that a fear of falling means you have a fear of everything, since every facet of existence has some degree of risk attached to it. And right now the singer is overwhelmed with reality and everything in it. This could be a reaction to his personal life, the state of the world, or both. I’m inclined to think it’s both, with the state of the world weighing on him so heavily that it’s affecting the rest of his life. The severed hand line supports that reading. It’s likely a reference to a story about a soldier in the Iraq war who had to go find a friends severed hand, recognizing it from the wedding ring (if someone knows the details of this story better please share them). That experience (and the war around it that he is trying to walk away from) may have left the person so traumatized that they can’t make sense of anything else. Either way, he needs a way home, a way back to a sense of safety, and serenity. He needs some kind of grounding for his life

Are drugs the answer? They seem to be, at least in part. They offer an escape. You can see dragons instead of war—whatever kind of fantasy you want. And as we move into the next chorus the benefits of his expanded sense of consciousness are clear. His room is larger, and there’s more space for him within it. It buys him time to try and think and understand, but at the same time there is a realization that this isn’t the answer. The questions haven’t gone away. Reality will be waiting for him, and he’s going to have to confront it and decide how he can live in, and hopefully transcend, the world of pain outside our vacuum alluded to in Life Wasted and World Wide Suicide.

Vedd Hedd

Leave your lady on the cement floor.

NeverbeenLedbetter

great tune, hope I get to see it live this tour.

YoullseeDragons

I thought that at one point when the song was first released, it was referenced to Ed's split from Beth. Whatever the case, this song ROCKS! I obvioulsy dig it.

nukeboot

Ed was on Seattle radio when 8 first came out and they discussed it.

The psychtropic drug is some kind of South American mixture that is pretty intense.

Bathgate66

Big man stands behind an open door
Said, "Leave your lady on the cement floor."

"Got some kicks, wanna take a ride?"
I said, "Yeh,..."
"Take your pick, leave yourself behind."
I Said, "Yeh,..."

I've no fear but for falling down
So look out below, I am falling now
Oh please understand, I just need my friend
A way home.

Tried to walk, found a severed hand
Recognized it by the wedding band

"It's okay, do you want some more?"
I said, "Yeh,..."
"You'll see dragons after 3 or 4...:
I said, "Yeh,..."

"Understand, I'm not falling down"
I said, "Look around, the room's taller now,.."
I can't close my eyes, cause i see the sound
In waves

In waves, lets me stay calm

If I don't lose control
Explore and not explode
A preternatural other plane
With the power to maintain.

Like a tear in all we know
Once dissolved, we are free to grow
"What is human?,... What is more?"
I'll answer this

When I get home.

SVRDhand13

nice interpretations. mine is like a mix of the ones above. just wanted to say that this song is freakin awesome live.

Julien

overstand wrote:

I always thought of it as a guy going off to war and leaving his wife behind...and finding a severed hand....his own! and just the trippy fuckedupness your brain goes through in a battle situation...and from being maimed...and all the time the soldier just wants to get home...and that keeps him sane..thinking about home.

...and yes i did hear ed say it was about psychotropics...so i guess my theory is shot...but that is what the song says to me and it is very powerful

I always think about that too when I hear that song..

djonesr

well I think it is a hands-down, no-brainer for bonnaroo!

NewJPage

drugs. didn't i read somewhere that it is his first-person experience of something he did in south america? like, he went out in the middle of nowhere with some indigenous mystic dude, and the guy got him totally fucked up on some sort of something...??? it was some sort of local, sacred thing. maybe im crazy...

pjfan85

I remember reading an interview where Eddie said it was about being on some kind of a drug that I've never heard of before. Something psychedelic that he did in South America somewhere. It was in Rolling Stone, I think.