Interpretations Talk:Spiraling Shape

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This song always reminds me of a Star Trek:TNG episode where a recreational 'game' that involves spiraling shapes is distributed among the crew. The members of the crew put on these holographic 'glasses' and play a game with their minds or something.

Anyway, the game consists of spiraling shapes that the hypnotized crew member controls with their mind. Anyone who tries the game becomes hopelessly addicted and eventually becomes a slave to a sinister alien power. Wesley Crusher sees through this though, and resists the whole way. In the end he pretends to try it and like it. I feel that there are a lot of similarities to this episode and the song -Mark

Also - there's another episode of TNG that is perhaps even more applicable! When a single Borg is rescued and separated from the collective, he becomes an individual named Hugh. The crew of the Enterprise then struggle with the moral implications of using Hugh to destroy the Borg via feeding an image of a mathematically impossible spiraling shape directly into Hugh's optical processors, and returning him to the Borg. It was thought that the spiraling shape would spread through the Borg like a virus, disabling them as their neural processors become overloaded with analyzing the impossible shape, perhaps driving them insane! -Dave

This is why I love being a fan of this band. Where else could one get 'Star Trek' and TMBG in the same paragraph?! :-) --MisterMe 19:48, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

..and I had thought it was obvious, lol[edit]

It's interesting to see such a broad range of interpretations. I immediately thought this song was about psychedelic drugs. Although I suppose anybody who has no experience with such things might not think of this. I think the fact it is on the soundtrack to Brain Candy also encouraged me to think so.

One sees fractals, spirals and such shapes while hallucinating on psychedelics. I think it is a tongue-in-cheek nod to propaganda against it since they mention falling out the window, going insane, and wrecking your life, after trying the drugs, which is the sort of overblown stuff found in anti drug propaganda. The fact that they say people want to try it, that it's "groovy" really fits with way people talk about drugs, especially this kind. One puts their "reason aside", exchanging their rational brain for "this thing that's hypnotic and strange" i.e. going into the psychedelic trip where reality is altered. The fact that "nobody knows what it's really like but everyone says it's great" seems like saying how it is hard to truly describe what one experiences while tripping but it can nonetheless be fun.

Whether it's truly tongue-in-cheek, or if they might have a real reason to actually be warning against doing it (perhaps having a friend who did something stupid or ruined their life due to drugs) I can't say. But I lean more to thinking it's poking fun, as it's pretty rare for anybody to actually have anything truly life-wrecking happen due to hallucinogens.

The loop,[edit]

I've been thinking since I listened to this that it was talking about the torus, a shape resembling a donut that is actually what some people see on LSD, it just seems logical, me and my buddy are basically just trying to prove that this shape is akin to the "God" we think of, and maybe if people even see them and mistake them for flying saucers, anyways... It's just making me crazy not knowing and if you look at the lyrics maybe you'll think that its talking about the weird lsd torus alien donut god too... Maybe you already know what I'm talking about