Interpretations:No One Knows My Plan

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Note: He talks of... "they're like the people chained(tied) up in the cave. In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy" The Allegory of the Cave is about people (meant to be Greek society) who are chained up in a cave. The cave is underground and the only way out is up and behind the people. They are chained though so they can only see into the back of the cave. In the back of the cave there is a screen at which the people see shadows of things. These shadows come from people (meant to be Greek leaders) who are showing the objects shadows from out of the cave so the shadow is projected so the greek society can see it. For example: They will show a shadow of a dog. The people in the cave dont know what a dog is. So it is up to the leaders holding it to tell them what it is. They at this point can say "Cat" and the society will believe them. It's about being decieved. In this song what he means is he was at his window with the shades down at night with his light on so his shadow is seen on his window. His actions inside are seen outside by the cops and it apperas to be some sort of crime, perhaps killing a person.

... and this allegory can be found in Plato's Republic I believe.

I'd always believed that the "people chained up in the cave" allegory indicates Homer's Odyssey. One of the best-known bits of the epic takes place as the displaced hero Odysseus and his crew land on the island of the cyclops.

As Homer tells it, on the island is a cave filled with rich food, a welcome and irresistible sight to the travel-weary sailors. As they gorge themselves on it, the cave's owner, a cyclops by the name of Polyphemus, returns, and quickly traps the intruders, chaining them up in his cave. Because cyclopes are man-eaters, the sailors' need to escape is desperate; thus, Odysseus devises a plan.

The first order of business in the scheme is to get the cyclops drunk, which Odysseus pulls off easily with his ships' store of wine. Polyphemus asks his new drinking buddy his name, and Odysseus replies that his name is "Utis." Utis, roughly translated, is "No-man." As most heavily inebriated giant monsters do, Polyphemus soon zonks out.

Odysseus gives the signal, and his men creep up and plunge a spear into the sleeping giant's lone eyeball. The cyclops wakes up and cries out to his cyclopian brothers that he's being attacked by Utis, by "No-man." The other cyclopes hear this and assume that since Polyphemus is being attacked by no man, then his attacker must be one of the gods. Although not terribly bright, the cyclopes know better than to interfere in the business of angry gods, so they leave Odysseus and his men to return to their ship. -- Fiasco

This song is about committing a murder. Unfortunately for the murderer there was a witness that saw him commit the murder through the window shades. The rest of the song is the narrator dwelling on what he's going to do when he gets out of jail. The narrator is probably a sadist - "the shrieks of pain - the lovely music." -- repugnant

I think this is one of the most hopeful songs Linnell has written. It seems to me to be about the joy of living with a free mind and imagination. The "allegory of the cave" is explained in this article, to which someone has added a reference to this song. But the line "the smell of burning autumn leaves" disappoints me because it seems to be a reference to the odor of Marijuana, and I always thought the Johns were staunchly anti-drug. :( --Nehushtan 02:42, 2 Mar 2006 (CST)

It think using the 'allegory of the perople in the cave' is suggesting that, although there was a murder, the people who testified do not realise the murderer's motive, while the murderer thinks that the his murder was justified. -- Hitako47

All right, well, my interp is pretty much an combination of many of the interps above, and decently literal. The narrator is trapped in a prison cell, due to past "carelessness", probably (but not certainly) insane. This is known by the fact that he/she is talking to objects. He/she also has some sinister plan to escape, and is having trouble concealing this fact. ("No one know my plan...I must contain my secret smile") I would like to imagine that the "When I made a shadow...." section is referencing the "crime", that of making a shawow on one's windowshade, possibly a murder, possibly something else. The allegory of the cave obfusely indicates that, whatever the crime was, the narrator feels his/her inprisonment was unfair, the crime to be necessary, and that others have not understand the reasons he/she did it, a potentionally pyschopathic viewpoint, depending on the crime, which i like to believe was a murder. pretty much everything else is the song I regard as-is, with "biding time", etc. I don't know what the shreaks of pain and leaves are in reference to. I like to consider them a product of the pyschopathic-ness.

However, an alternate interp has just occured to me. What if the crime of necessity was committed in a society like that of I should be allowed to think? That puts a whole new freaky spin on things, what with the narrartor actually being morally *right*, and not insane, etc. Wow! -- Desck

Yep, I am mostly with Desck on this one.. The only thing to add is that the shrieks of pain and leaves, etc. are part of his plan (the one no one knows or understands). 'Always busy cooking up an angle/.../Sketching out the burning autumn leaves' suggests this.

But also (and this is a stretch) I like to think that these things are what he was arrested for in the first place. The chorus wouldn't make a lot of sense if this isn't true- because accusing everyone of misunderstanding implies doing something that was misunderstood, and this is followed by all these why-do-this-type questions.. So I like to think he was spazming (shrieking, dancing to the lovely music, burning autumn leaves) in his home, these things being part of his plan, which his neighbours saw projected against the windowshades, 'misunderstood' and called the police. Now he is in a solidary cell (talking to his mirror and cell bars would suggest this) and compulsively keeps planning that of which what he was arrested for formed a part.. :)

Why is it always about murder? To me (and I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying that this is what first occured to me), this is about a journalist who got locked up and is planning his exposure of the government or whoever upon his release. Partly it's because of the part where he talks about the "angle": usually the only place people--me, anyway-- hear about an angle is from reporters. "I was careless/I can see that now" sounds to me like he printed something scandalous without regard for how people in power would react. So when he "made shadows on the windowshade", i.e., reported on whatever it was, no one could recognize whether or not it was the truth, because they were locked up in Plato's cave. Now that he's in prison he has to be quiet about everything he knows, even though he wants to tell the people who locked him up, or his "iron bars", and the people who might tend to agree with his positions, or his "mirror". Again, I could be making this up, but the "burning autumn leaves" etc. suggest to me more that there are riots going on outside than sadism or pot-smoking. So, when he says he's "cooking up an angle" and "mapping out the burning autumn leaves", he's planning his story about his imprisonment and the riots during that time. Incidentally, if you killed someone and went to prison for it, would your first thought be "oh, that was careless of me"? Just asking.

I had assumed the narrator was mad. The bewildering dancing, shouting, shrieks of pain, the lovely music, the smell of burning autumn leaves are the riot in his head, and they make no sense to him. After all, he asks "why" the dancing, etc, why are they doing that?

This makes the cell his room, and the iron bars and mirror literal. At some point he had "cast a shadow on" his window shade, ie, he did something crazy which could be observed from the outside and was taken to the mental hospital, but if he'd only been more careful and kept his secret thoughts secret, they wouldn't have caught him. Besides, how could they understand his plan, they're of limited insight, mundane, like the cave people in The Republic. Feelings of persecution, paranoia, and special knowledge are standard stuff for schizophrenics.

These lines in particular lead me to suspect the narrator is insane:

In my prison cell I bide my time

Always thinking, Always busy cooking up an angle

Working on the tiny blueprint of the angle

Sketching out the burning autumn leaves

Taken together, these sentences make no sense. They're connected linearly, but not logically or meaningfully, since a sketch of the burning autumn leaves from your tortured fancy probably doesn't qualify as an escape plan or a coherent manifesto.

It's a common TMBG theme, the Unreliable Narrator, but I really like this song, which is neither here nor there, but I do. ~ Christina Miller, December, 2006

Ah... When I was crazy, I thought about this song a lot. They had me in there for being way too happy and acting like a little kid, returning to the womb somewhat, you might say. But now I can face the tomb, like in "Stranger than Fiction" Hope this helps, --HearingAid

I believe that the narrator was innocent and wrongly thrown in jail. The key here is that in Plato's allegory of the people in the cave, the prisoners are mistaken when they talk about the shadows of the things that they see on the wall. Likewise, whoever witnessed the narrator supposedly comitting a crime on the window shade is also mistaken, which is why the narrator refers to them as similar to the people in the cave. The rest of it, I believe, refers to some sort of elaborate escape plan in which only the narrator knows how it will work. He wants to share his brillant secret plan with someone, but can't (hence, the title etc...etc.) This is why the random list of actions/things "the dancing, shouting" "shrieks of pain" and "lovely music" (etc.) makes no sense to us. At the risk of a lame/cliche pun, we simply don't know his plan. --A_Moose_Denied July 2007

It is the concept of an artist in general - who no one understands, thus he is isolated; 'imprisoned' either figuratively and/or literally. If you need a literal example, think of a guy doing performance art in his living room, which in turn landed him in jail when the neighbors saw. The neighbors were the type who 'just didn't get it' (they prolly voted for Bush in the last election - sorry could NOT resist.)

Shadowman

This song reminds me of a jail song. When I say jail song, I mean a song like the one Buster Keaton begins whistling in Steamboat Willy Jr. when he's trying to get his buddy to realize that he has packed a great multitude of giant filers, saws, and other implements useful in aiding his escape from the jail. Attributed to such songs are mixed feelings of joy and sorrow, mundaneness, and revelations about one's life. I think, anyways. It's that kind of song you sing when you're trying to pass the time away in ways other than scribbling tally points on the walls of whatever jail you're in. This is sort of how I see this song. Only there's a humorous difference: the instrumentation of jail songs is rather simplistic, while this one has a quite eleaborate and extravagent overall sound. Only now do I realize how little I know about anything I've said. But does anyone agree? -B.S.

Does this remind anyone of Hitler writing Mein Kampf? -bs

No One Knows My Plan

Interpretations:No One Knows My Plan

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