Interpretations:Now Is Strange
- Song
- Lyrics
- Interpretations
- Credits
- Guitar Tab
- Bass Tab
- Chronology
Contents
The chorus I believe is about how the "now" is strange because it only exists for a brief instant. "Now" is not "before" anymore, it's gone! What got changed? Weird. :)
- But now IS before now right? It was in the future, but now that now has passed, it is before. It can't suddenly stop being before unless you go back in time! Still weird though.
I think this song is about present times
where's that naughty boy (man) who steals each blade of grass (cuts down forests and destroys nature) and replaces it with wires, and batteries (and puts up power lines and building and stuff) now is strange (the world today is strange compaired to what it use to look like) the rest is kinda fuzzy.
I think the narrator is a person who lacks a firm grasp on reality due to mental illness. He/she suffers from paranoid delusions and believes that the feeling of strangeness that he/she experiences in the present moment is due to the interference of outside forces, strange and nefarious, and not any internal filter that alters perception. But that's just my opinon.
While there may be political overtones to this song the way it has always struck me is that it is about how everyone always believes they're living in a strange time. Through out history a lot of people seem to have had the feeling that they would be better off living in some past time because the time they're actually living in is so weird/stressful/wrong.
I've been thinking over the apartment buzzer stanza and all I've got is: 6 is greater than 5. Something greater is being hidden underneath reality or present time. Then underneath THAT is something even better, or at least "impossible to imagine". I think basically what it's saying is that the future is getting harder to predict. In such a fast paced world, who knows what will happen?
--deathgecko (Evil Emperor of Lizards) 19:58, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
- "Who knows what will happen?" A seven.
---
The apartment buzzer verse is an allusion to the Pixies song Monkey Gone to Heaven - "and if God is 5, then the Devil is 6..."
- "If man is five ... then the Devil is six ... then God is seven."
When I listen to it, it makes me think of the ever changing Facebook home page. It's always changing format and nobody likes it and it seems strange to them. they say "No it's not before anymore! It's gone weird! Now is strange!" the 5 and 6 are the new format of the pages. And under the six, the unbelievable thing is the next format change. They can't imagine what it will look like and how awful it will be to adapt to it. --Nerdy4ever95 12:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
All I can hear instead of "I'd like to hear what did you change?" is "I liked your hair why did you change?"
So I thought this song was mostly about the loss of familiar things through time in the people you know. I guess it still is, but more about change in a broad sense. Also a good October song.
--CatastropheelingGood
Pick Seize[edit]
I didn't make the connection to the Pixies song until I came here. In Monkey Gone To Heaven, Man is 5 and the devil is 6 and God is 7. Perhaps the line about the apartment buzzer refers to the dehumanizing effect of technology... well, new technology. The apartment buzzer is old technology that lets people contact you if you live in a large apartment building. If you disconnect that (perhaps because you're only using the Internet to talk to people now... which is pretty much what I do, but whatever) then the people can't come up to your apartment and be with you in person, and maybe that leads to bad things. If you remove your 5 (humanity) you get 6 (the devil)... but if you remove the devil then you get God... so maybe to reach God you have to destroy your humanity and get past the devil?
Well that's just me guessing.--Mandaliet 21:10, 21 April 2012 (EDT)
Part 9 of The Spine
The Spine, upon learning that her father is dead, starts viewing everything in the world as strange. She also starts to go a bit insane, starting to worry about things that don't seem to make sense to others.
Singers: The Spine.
