Interpretations:Subliminal

There's probably no grand plan to it - I feel that it's like many of Linnell's songs, just setting out to create an atmosphere of Philip K Dick / Twilight Zone style paranoia or altered reality, without necessarily having a literal meaning.

Adam S Leslie

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This song is about some guy's dreams. The first verse is a car crash dream. The he wakes up and realizes it was a dream ("As i lie in my bed") That's pretty much it.

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I think this song it's about subliminal messages, and it's one it self.

"(As I got hit by a car there was a message for me
As I went through the windshield, I noticed something"

He got hit by a car and flew through the windshield and discovered a message and when he says "I noticed something", this message becomes subliminal.

"(Subliminal) subliminal
(In an unnoticeable way)
(Important) important
(And hard to see)
(Subliminal) subliminal
(Subliminal) subliminal"

The chorus is reaffirming that the message was a subliminal message, and hard to see.

"While lying there in my bed there was a message for me
As I went through the pillow, I noticed something"

here we have the same thing happening as the first verse, but in a bed. He is doing something and noticed that there was a message, and now we can see that he only discovers this message when he "went through" something.

"Stare into the subliminal / for as long as you can"

He is asking us to stare in this subliminal message, contained in the song, and go as far as we can with it.

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Fun stuff. I like the way Linnell's accordion saws away at the beginning. The last part of the song is a canon. Some phrases are sung in a low register (baritone) to give their rendition a subliminal feel. --Nehushtan 23:19, 9 Apr 2006 (CDT)

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I have a two takes on the song. To identify it, we have to identify what A: The subliminal thing B: The car scene C: The dream those are. So here are my two.

1: The car scene is him getting hit by a car, crashing through the windsheild, and possibly dying. The bed scene is him waking up realizing it was a dream, and actually just hitting his pillow not the windshield. The subliminal thing is that dreams are actually like subliminal messages that mean something but it's hard to see what.

2: The car scene is again, getting hit by a car, crashing through the windshield, and getting hospitalized. The moment before he goes unconsious he sees a subliminal hint that the car crash wasn't a freak accident. When he's in his hospital bed, whatever caused the crash realizes that he's not dead yet, and pulls the plug on his life support. Just before he dies, he sees something subliminal about who it is, but he's dead, and as a ghost his transparent body falls through the pillow.

I kinda got the ideas from tmbg.org, but I went with them meself. ~AgentChronon

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I don't think the song is actually about this, but it reminds me of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. It blames all of humanity's physical and mental problems on "Engrams," the repressed memories of experiences people have while unconscious, such as going through a windshield or being asleep.

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The penultimate section of this song sounds like The Beach Boys. Brain Wilson was schizophrenic. Make your own connections.

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