Crop Duster – Analogy for God?

goof

Crop Duster is one of my favorite PJ songs and one that took me a while to understand but now seems so simple and clear. As a disclaimer I am not trying to spark a debate but offer my own personal interpretation of a song. It may seem like a stretch for a Crop Duster to be an analogy for God but my interpretation of the song is as follows.

For me the light went on when I asked myself “who” is singing the song. If you imagine God singing the song while realizing that He did not create the universe and that man created Him turning everything upside down.

Dad, he's gone up flames,..
But this ain't no movie
This ain't no book you can close
When the big lie hits your eye.
Everybody's practicing,....
Our world's an accident
I was the fool because I thought
I thought the world
Turns out the world thought me
It's all the other way round
We're upside down

The link to a Crop Duster would is that “crops” were around long before the use of Crop Dusters. If you can imagine the crops asking themselves deep philosophical questions (“Eyes, no eyes, there’s no difference…Every life is looking in”) they may look to the Crop Duster as a God. While the Crop Duster may be essential in sustaining a strong crop yield the dependency is the other way around. This is because with out the Crop Duster there still is a crop but with out a crop there is no Crop Duster.

Like all great songs the meaning is different for everyone (and usually not the same as the artist)…what are your thoughts on this song??

Thanks

slightofjeff

I've had this thought occur to me as well, especially the: "turns out the world thought me bit."

Reason I say this is based on something I once heard come out of Ed's mouth directly. At the '98 show in Kansas City, Ed told a story about how a convention of Methodists was meeting to discuss various aspects of their faith. Among the questions on the docket: Did God really create the Earth in seven literal days,as the book of Genesis suggests? Or was it more figurative than that?

Ed's response: "The real question isn't how long it took God to create man. It's how long did it take man to create God?"

And a few years later, Cropduster was written ...

mattcozea

I think it's more about humanity, and how we believe the world revolves around us. The world was around for billions of years before we came to be. But I can see it your way too, and I like that we can come up with different interpretations for the same song.