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Meaning of Lightening Bolt Art in Connection with Songs
fortyshades
Posts: 1,834
There is a topic about the BS art, so lets have a topic about the LB art and the symbolisms we can find in connection with the song.
Let me kick it off:
MYM
The picture depicts religion but also a plate and fork - connecting religion with (table) manners. This seems straightforward, but I think it is a bit more complicated. On the one hand it symbolize how religion has crept in all the facets in our daily life - and with this I mean normative behaviour or the readiness to conform. It also symbolizes that following this conformism blindly, we may step away from being (social) critical. Notice the fork and knive; these are not set in the correct places according to etiquette. In short: I don't think that MYM is about religion perse, but about conformism, being misguided and not asking the important questions.
Sirens
The picture shows a pyramide with speakers wailing. If you look at the lyrics of the song, the song is about the fragility, the sense or realization of mortality in the face of love. At the same instance love is the solid breathing ground/bottom in which this same fear can be faced. (A pyramide is pretty solid.) If we take the pyramid as a symbolism for love and the speakers as the Sirens, we see how the one is dependent on the other...
Let me kick it off:
MYM
The picture depicts religion but also a plate and fork - connecting religion with (table) manners. This seems straightforward, but I think it is a bit more complicated. On the one hand it symbolize how religion has crept in all the facets in our daily life - and with this I mean normative behaviour or the readiness to conform. It also symbolizes that following this conformism blindly, we may step away from being (social) critical. Notice the fork and knive; these are not set in the correct places according to etiquette. In short: I don't think that MYM is about religion perse, but about conformism, being misguided and not asking the important questions.
Sirens
The picture shows a pyramide with speakers wailing. If you look at the lyrics of the song, the song is about the fragility, the sense or realization of mortality in the face of love. At the same instance love is the solid breathing ground/bottom in which this same fear can be faced. (A pyramide is pretty solid.) If we take the pyramid as a symbolism for love and the speakers as the Sirens, we see how the one is dependent on the other...
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Comments
Getaway
Picture look straightforward, almost childlike. A priest and two listeners. Was it not that the hats were the hats that liars had to wear publicly when they were punished. Also look at the different coloured hats. To me this closely interlinks with the lyrics of the song. I read (and heard) that this is "another" anti-religion song of PJ. But I don't think it is that simple. I think the meaning of the song is more subtle. I think that the song is about "believing" and that not-believing (atheism) is in a sense "religious". This is resonanced in the line: "Having to put all your faith in no faith". This is looking at religions through the looking glass. It seems that we cannot escape "believing" in something or, respectively in extention, to "lying to ourselves". We need it to survive. Which brings me back to the hats. So to me this song conveys that religion and/or spirituality is an integrated part of our humaness. I think that this is the revelation of the protagonist in the song. No matter what science or Simon says; there is an element of believing in there. And that is "ok". The one doesn't necessarily contradict the other, but if you start to instutionalize it, thats when you have to get your getaway.
Ps for the critical reader: I took some liberty here to use the words "believing" and "religion" in alternated ways. I know that religion implies more (institutions/ rituals etc.), but I am reffering here to the experience of beleiving in something or nothing. I also know that there is a difference between science and religion, mainly that science is based on "facts"; but some is also based on hypothesis, and as Carl Sagan once stated, the difference between science and religion is quite thin. The main difference is that science, due to its fact searching mission, may alter/ change its fundaments easier. Theories that were "truths" once, are obsolete now. That is the strength of science, while the strength of religion lies in its continuity and fundaments. (Just a sidenote.)