Interpretations:Louisiana

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Hm... a girlfriend or someone he trusts is strangling him with a blanket and he is so trusting and loving that he'd forgive them completely if they stopped? Odd that "pull the wool over me" can actually be interpreted literally here. -Ecks

I always assumed this song was from the point of view of an alligator who is confused and docile because the person he was trying to eat has tossed a blanket over his face. Covering the eyes of an attacking alligator is a well-known way of subduing it (at least according to such reputable sources as "The Last Case Scenario Survival Guide"). Clues to this interpretation come from the title and setting of the song, as well as the speaker's rather straightforward style of thinking: "I wish that everything went just as I wished everything would go"--that's exactly what and alligator WOULD say if they could talk, isn't it?

You know, the interesting thing is that, besides having a blanket over his head, the narrator is in no other way incapacitated, and doesn't even have his arms or legs bound. ~ magbatz 00:38, March 12, 2006

For those of us who live in Louisiana, summertime is very humid and hot, almost unbearably so. I think TMBG has toured through the state at some point, and they probably experienced the opressive stickiness. So, I always thought this song was about how it feels like a blanket over the face when trying to breathe in Louisiana heat & humidity!

These are interesting takes on the song. I'm hearing it for the first time and it strikes me as one of Linnells super-macabre sad/funny songs about a guy getting murdered and trying to reason with the person strangling him. He's just saying whatever he can think of to reason with his killer. "You were not so bad and I wont be mad" sounds to me like something someone would shout in a moment of desperation. -Cronny

I've always thought of it as a practicle joke gone a little too far, and "Louisiana" is the suspected culprit. 'You were not so bad and I won't be mad' sounds like the narrator is trying his hardest to reason with the joker and have the prank end and not be tormented any further.

The thing that strikes me about the song is that it seems like the narrator knows whoever is strangling him, and knows (or thought he knew) them reasonably well. It might not necessarily be a girlfriend or boyfriend relationship, but that he can guess who it is without seeing their face implies some familiarity on his part.

This persona comes across as an extremely lonely guy who really wishes he wasn't. He's so anxious to feel wanted that when he falls in with a bad crowd, though he may suspect that they're not really his friends - notice how the song has a surprising lack of, well, surprise, considering he's being painfully murdered - he's happy, because he can feel accepted and his world doesn't have to be "dark and empty" any more. He pulls the metaphorical wool over his own eyes, which only allows someone to later pull literal wool over them too.

When it finally gets worse and his other so-called friends have fled ("I'm trying to figure out where everybody's gone"), he's still glad that his would-be killer is staying with him / still "a place". He doesn't struggle at all because he knows that even if he were to escape, he'd be out completely on his own again, and he'd do anything not to face that crippling fact. Instead, he convinces himself that if he can just reason with Louisiana, they'll be friends again and he can go on with his happy life of denial like nothing ever happened. He wants everything to go the way he wants it, everything in the world to match up with this delusion he's built up in his head. That, predictably, is where his story ends.

Another mildly interesting point: the song is narrated in a noticeably simplistic, almost childlike way, and it seems like the narrator's thought processes are along those lines. Young children are often clingy when it comes to their parents and people they know in general, for one thing. Inferring anything about the narrator of the song from that would probably count as tinfoil-hat guessing. ~ blitzente (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is about the narrator singing from a grave in Louisana, or if he is singing about Louisiana suffocating him with its nature (the blanket). I'm pretty sure it's the former.

In the former (Singing from a grave), the narrator is complaining of a blanket of dirt that is Louisana, suffocating him. If he knows where he is (in a coffin), he knows who it could be who owns the soil blanket-- Louisiana.

It's likely he's saying that life in Louisana was not so bad-- appreciating life now that its end draws nigh.

You've heard the phrase of "Spinning in your grave"-- and out of the few lyrics that aren't part of the chorus, Linnell does sing..

Although I'm glad that Louisana is a place,
so I don't have to spin in dark and empty space

--SoreThumb 19:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


Blanket[edit]

I don't think it's a literal blanket, but a metaphor for being deceived. It's another way of saying "They've pulled the wool down over me": http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pull+the+wool+over+eyes --Mandaliet 08:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


Voodoo[edit]

After just having heard this song for the first time about five minutes ago, my first thought was that the narrator has been mistaken for dead (they put a sheet over him when they found him), due to a voodoo curse. He can feel the hands around the neck of the voodoo doll. I do admit, he seems to be pretty understanding about this... --Patteroast 04:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Prank?[edit]

I believe this song is about someone who has been separated from their friends and murdered. However they believe their friend are throwing a surprise party/pranking him, so he doesn't worry about what's happening to him.

Bad relationship[edit]

I kind of think this song is about an abusive relationship, or at the very least a codependent/dysfunctional one. Of course, it's sung from the perspective of the victim/dependent. The desperate reasoning with someone framed almost as a captor/killer - I will be nice about it, I will be forgiving, You were not so bad, etc. - strikes me as the narrator becoming aware of the mistreatment and begging for it to stop whilst also being unable to completely let go of the affection they had for the subject. The 'captor' here holds all the cards, at least emotionally. Also, although (as others have mentioned) the narrator is not physically bound in any way, they still don't seem to have the power to remove the blanket from their face. That is to say, although they physically could remove the blanket, they feel paralysed, unable to escape the grasp of the subject.

Isolation, something a lot of people who have been in deeply unhealthy relationships experience and understand, is also a really prevalent theme. This is especially true in the first verse: I'm trying to figure out where everybody's gone/I wonder when they're gonna turn the lights back on. It's as if the narrator's dire situation dawns on them all at once, like something clicks and they suddenly realise just how alone they are.

Morose interpretation, maybe! But it's how I tend to see it. Unsuspectingprey (talk) 07:16, 19 April 2024 (EDT)

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