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Interpretations:Diving Board

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Love from afar between a diving board and a pool?

One of those never-meant-to-be love stories. I find it rather moving, actually. --Salt-Man Z 11:36, 5 May 2006 (CDT)

I think it's just a crazy song with weird lyrics. But it's damn good.

Here Come The ABCs was their second bestselling album of all time. I'd like to think this song was inspired by the repercussions of that. -Lars

I think there is another seperate meaning below the obvious "love from afar" theme, whether he intended to say this or not: It is also about performing for a live audience.


Performer stands at the edge of a pool of people who are undulating, waving and swaying, their heads and shoulders look like a small sea from stage-level. From there, the performer can sense them, can smell them, and the audience can see the performer, ie,


"The diving board can sense the pool, the diving board can smell the pool, the swimming pool can see the board."
"The chemical perfume reveals a massive chlorinated lake, the undulating shape above to her is unmistakable"


If he is standing there, just over them, just out of reach, without his glasses on, he can hear and smell them, but not really see them or touch them,


"He doesn't need to see or touch to know each intimate detail"


The audience cannot touch him, but they can see and hear him,


"She holds the image of him there, and in this way possesses him"


because the audience cannot possess him in any other way.


In the bridge of the song, the distance is literally bridged by a third party, the diver,


"Something overhead is suspended there, There's a muffled bounce, Something starts to fall"


This can be stage-divers, who literally jump into the audience. This can be the sound, springing from the performer, which is here-to-fore not mentioned specifically in the lyric, but in some senses is the whole point of talking about diving boards/performers and pools/audiences - divers/sound. This can be the fleeting thought of the performer that although he himself is not free to fall forward and plunge into the pool, the tug is there, so a phantom self can dive into the fray for him.


This is a fascinating lyric. I am always amazed at how TMBG lyrics can function on several seperate different levels at once. I also like, how under this scheme, the audience is water, female, and something that pulls things into it. That the performer is phallic, but removed from the thing that desires him, and is satisfied with looking at him instead of engulfing him. Really poetic. Also funny is that if we accept this meaning, the audience is *smelly*.

~Christina Miller, September 2006

Penis and Vagina.


-J

Ehem? Phallic = penis-like, so we just mentioned that above. Besides, I kinda think the yoni-lingam symbolism is too obvious to be the absolute point of the song, don't you imagine? I mean, they tend to write about sex obliquely. Unless you think John Linnell said to himself, Hm, yes, I need to write a song from the point of view of a giant penis .... yes .... ~Christina Miller, October 2007
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