Interpretations:The Statue Got Me High
See, I always thought this was about someone who was going to go out with a girl, but he got stood up and was left waiting for her by a statue. When he says the statue got him high, he is being sarcastic because the girl was supposed to get him high but she didn't even turn up. He's also sort of comforting himself like- "it'll be alright, me and the statue". And at the end he's so pissed off he imagines that the statue tells him to burn a building down.
To me, this song is, at the core, about getting emotionally swept away by a piece of art, to the extent that one loses one's sense of self.
"I remember seeing an interview with linnell once, and he explained that this song is about a guy who looks at a statue and his head blows up. No hidden meanings or anything..." (off Usenet)
I thought it was about a microwave.
Really. I thought it had something to do with politics. Hmm.
I always had this bizarre and probably erroneous notion that this song is about a Doctor Who story from the late70s/early80s called The Keeper Of Traken. Though I'm sure Mr L has probably never seen the Tom Baker story in question, the song describes some of the scenes in the programme very closely.
Adam S Leslie
I thought it was about being killed in an incident with an exploding space shuttle.
It's about Don Giovanni. I heard it from some live recording. Linnell said something along the lines of "This song is about Don Giovanni... which I didn't know when I first wrote it." http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html
I've seen this opera... basically a statue burns this dude in the end. It matches up with the song. - Doctor Masonstein
- The recording was from Live!! NYC, and I suspect Linnell's joke is to be taken literally.
I dunno... it kind of sounds like some guy doing LSD or something and blaming it on the statue... :) -- StarkRG
Stuff by Linnell is threaded with angst, guilt, and a bit of sublimated sex. This sounds like a guy with a secret sexual fixation on someone, and he is externalizing it, so the desire has a stone form of the object. Here's my thinking:
1. The object of desire "sent a beam into my eye" (Saw the object of affection and was transfixed by it. The paranoid idea that the object has special power over him. Also might be a biblical pun: cast out the beam in your own eye before attending to the mote in someone else's)
2. "took my hand" (romance begins), "it threw me to the sky," "made me die" (In French, orgasm is "the little death")
3. "though I once preferred a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me." (The desire for, the idea of, the object of affection has taken on huge dimensions in his mind, and even supercedes the object itself.)
4. "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie." (The secret desire that wants to be revealed. Made me think of Michelango's famous comment that he sculpted by chipping away anything that wasn't statue.)
5. Climax to the song, if you pardon the pun: "And as the screaming fire engine siren filled the air, the evidence had vanished from my charred and smoking chair." (This is very heavily sexual - he is overwhelmed by the heat he has for the statue, it completely consumes him. "Evidence had vanished"; evidence is what you gather after a crime - in this case, the crime of desire by him and the damage it does to him, burning him to a crisp. Also, not just a siren, but a screaming siren, an alarm sound; it evokes an intense nerve-shattering feeling. I think this guy is masturbating while worshipping the representation in his mind of object of his affection. The screaming fire engine siren is the sound in his mind. Awesome. Kind of disturbing.)
6. "And now it is your turn, your turn to hear the stone and then your turn to burn." (He resents the object for its effect on him, and he wants the object to return his affection, and he wants the object to suffer as he has. He wants the object of affection to hear the call of desire personified and externalized, and capitulate. He wants the object to be consumed while worshipping before the alter of desire. "You can't refuse to do the things it tells you to" is a directive to the object of his affection and an excuse, as in, I couldn't refuse to do what it told me to.)
And as long as I am being a wiki pig, I do see Don Giovanni here, but referenced because Don G. is about guilt and seduction and firey retribution for same. It's like referencing the resurrection of Christ in writing - literature isn't usually about Christ per se, it is alluded to because it is a powerful culturally shared idea. - Christina Miller
I saw a congruence between this song and 2001: A Space Odyssey which is pretty obvious: the statue is the reappearing artifact in the film. There's nothing wrong with the statue - in fact, it's perfect in its right angles and smooth texture which foils the dirty apes in the beginning of the film. The conflict is the reaction characters have to it which brings about change. It'll kill them like it killed the apes, and replace them with something better. Man made it to the moon but the statue showed them it wasn't far enough. HAL, a piece of perfect technology himself, actually does kill a bunch of humans (I'm assuming HAL could substitute the statue since they're both high-end technologies but the statue lacks the instruements for murder). Afterward, they're replaced by something better again, a space-baby or something.
So the song follows: the monolith is introduced. Here it is, it's going to bring a change. Next, it takes effect and the old start dying off, apparently starting with the singer. Finally, it ends as we fall from its effects - if we don't, it'll just wait until we die to start the change.
I could get into the changing, relating it to extinction, the collapse of great empires, Darwinism and social entropy but that would be more like interpretation of the movie and not the song (you could even get psychoanalytical and see the artifact as a big phallic symbol). If you havn't seen the movie and like this song, I recommend it. - sheep
QUOTE: It's about Don Giovanni. I heard it from some live recording. Linnell said something along the lines of "This song is about Don Giovanni... which I didn't know when I first wrote it." http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html I've seen this opera... basically a statue burns this dude in the end. It matches up with the song. - Doctor Masonstein
One of them said a similar thing about Metal Detector at a show or on Soundcheck, I forget which. Which would make this comment useless. Gotta love wikis. -underscore
---
If Linnell said he didn't know it was about Don G when he wrote it, then it is only about Don G. if you buy the whole Jungian thing about universal unconscious and archetypes, and even then, you could say that John dug into our shared bag of images and pulled out one that Mozart already used for his opera. It's not like he was sitting around the pool one day and said, mm, gotta write me a song that rips off Mozart - what would make a good pop song? The Magic Flute? Y'know, Don Giovanni needs to be taken down a peg. If I write a song about a guy who avenges his father's murder by his uncle, that doesn't mean it's about Hamlet.
I like the 2001 comparision better. The problem is that the monolith doesn't kill anyone, it is an agent for change, for evolution. It causes primates who come into contact with it to evolve to a higher level. The killing is secondary. HAL didn't evolve, he was making the best he could of being given conflicting instructions, remember? The killing was secondary to the problem, an adverse side effect of bad programming, and in fact, Dave "de-evolves" him in the famous Daisy, Daisy scene. HAL would have gotten unbalanced even if he were not near the monolith. The monolith certainly didn't make anyone burst into flame, as the singer in "Statue" does. It's a clever comparision, though.
All my opinion, of course. Gotta love wikis, and I do. - Christina Miller
I believe that this song is about being ensnared by American captialism. "The statue" is the Statue of Liberty, the symbol for the United States. Let's go through it line-by-line, shall we?
VERSE ONE:
It got him high, it empowered him by blinding him ("sent a beam into my eye"). Then it destroyed him, but made him see the good by doing so ("took my hand" - supported him, "killed me" - brought him crashing down, "turned me to the sky" - made him look at heaven).
CHORUS:
The allure of money was too much for him to resist ("the stone, it called to me" - the stone is money, but now he sees what money really means). "The rock that spoke a word" parallels with the old saying of how money talks. The line after that involves "animated mineral", which means that money is the moving force, extremely powerful and unshakable (like a rock), and reiterates the money talking bit: "Though I once preferred a human being's company" - He once liked to be with people, now he just wants money and the power of "the monolith that towers over me".
VERSE TWO:
"The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie" - Study of the way the country was MEANT to be made (the way the "sculptor" wanted it) caused him to see the truth after chipping away the lie, therefore showing the ugliness of the statue. All the reference to burning may be talking about hell, burning in hell for his greed, etc. "coat" implies riches.
The screaming fire engine part I interpret two ways.
1. The fire engine kept coming to save him from hell, but he burned up and disappeared so that he could continue to be greedy.
2. The fire engine might be the engine that MAKES fire, and he burns into insignificance and poorness to escape from it.
INSTRUMENTAL BREAK - END:
Linnell goes on to say that everyone will be tempted by greed.
One more thing: the video for this song depicts large, very plain stone objects, perhaps a statement about the blandness of culture that greed brings about. This also adds relevance to the line "The truth is where the sculptor's chisel chipped away the lie."
--Chuckie
--- That can't be true, because the song says the statue is mineral, but the Statue Of Liberty is metal. (anonymous)
These are all elaborate interpretations of the symbolism of the song, which has such a seamless narration that, most likely, there exists no symbolism. In essence, any hypnotic impulse that one feels leads to destruction can be the "statue" (a lover, a pusher, an obsession, a religion, or any seven deadly sin) in the listener's mind--no one "explanation" is any more canny than the other. On that note, the song certainly has no more to do with "2001: A Space Odyssey" than it does with "Pygmaelion." The common use of a "monolith" as a symbol is purely coincidental. Additionally, the nature of Linnell's gag about "Don Giovanni" would indicate that that the song was not written with the opera in mind. It's simply another TMBG mind control anthem, along the lines of The Bells Are Ringing and Spiraling Shape.
Maybe, but just because the artist didn't intend to create a certain meaning, that doesn't preclude it having meaning. (Christina Miller)
My mom thinks its about acid. she would know
who's that old guy in the video?
I think that it's about a fantastic HUGE DEATH LASER disguised as uh, a STATUE. The person singing was the protagonist of some movie with those cliche take-over-the-world schemes. And he was wasting his time, sitting in a chair, being indecisive. Then the HUGE DEATH LASER STATUE fired a laser beam into his retinas that was so intense he combusted and was matterwisely obliterated. And as he died, the statue gave him the meaning of the universe. But he couldn't share it with anyone, because he was dead. And everyone already dead knew it. So he went to heaven. That's what they mean by 'High'. They mean that spiritually. That movie would probaly be a flop anyways, with the antagonist succeeding, and the main character dying. Even if it had a killer song attached. Anyways, that's my interpretation. Pleased to be of service. --Homfrog
Definitely not what the songs about, but I envision a big statue somewhere falling and the narrator is killed by it. The guy's on a small rope bridge in a park next to a really big statue, and he stops halfway across because he thinks the statue is talking to him ("the stone, it called to me"), but then the base gives out and the statue shoots down, and the pillars on one end of the bridge and hit by debris so the end goes down, but the bridge is really solid so the other end goes up, and the narrator gets tangled up by the rope and he's thrown into the air ("got me high"). Some concrete beams holding the statue to the building behind it snap off and one of them impales the narrator in the eye as he's in the air ("sent a beam into my eye"), and a falling piece crushes off his hand as he falls ("it took my hand"). The bridge is right above a barbecue area, so when it and the statue falls, the area explodes and the narrator's incinerated ("made me fry"), and then a bunch of fire engines come to put out the flames from the explosion ("the screaming fire engine siren filled the air").
I think it's about... uhmmmmm... really staring at a piece of art (in this case a statue) and being like... um... really interested. And then your head blows up. Figuratively of course... like, it's all you can think about. I dunno, this is a weird song. Not to mention weird video. I like the video though. =D --Lemita 07:31, 3 Jul 2006 (MDT)
I think this song is about a walking sentieniet killer statue killing a guy. Nothing more, nothing less. No metaphors. The only part that doesn't fit, is the "they pale before the monolith that towers over me" but have you ever considered that maybe it's "they failed"? All the times I listened to the song I thought it was that and it made more sense... ~AgentChronon
I think I like the "Overwhelmed by art" interpretation. Makes the most sense to me.
Just a note but the line 'The evidence had vanished from my charred and smoking chair' probably refers to instances of spontaneous human combustion. Incidents where a person sitting in a chair combusted can occour without the surrounding furniture catching fire.
Of course, that's not exactly the same as having your head explode/face implode but it fits with the "burning with excitement" interpretation.
When I first head this song when it came out, I thought "Wow, a modern song about Don Giovanni!", which was quite exciting since Mozart's "Don Giovanni" happens to be my favorite opera. It made perfect sense: the narrator is Don Giovanni, the statue is Il Commandatore, and the entire song is about their confrontation towards the end of the opera ("Don Giovanni! a cenar teco m'invitasti..."). It's amazing that it's not the case! Xannie
Quoth John Linnel: It's not about drugs or anything, it's just about a guy that looks at a statue and his head explodes.
A guy gets killed by a statue. OMG. That's it. Foos. ~AgentChronon
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