Heartland

Joy wrote:It is the journalist indeed saying this opinion but I think an agreement from Von was necessary before the release. But who knows maybe 25 years ago the journalist could write something very different from what had been said in reality.

million voices wrote:Isn't "The bar that's always closing" etc line mean that him and the ex always end up shouting at each other?

rien wrote: That's how I'm hearing it, too, however I dimly recall seeing a post on here claiming that the song was about a guitarist who'd always hook up with other women behind his girlfriend's back when he was on tour.

kafka wrote:It's a great song, a great lyric. There's so much in there that can be read five different ways. For example, "You say we're almost all alone together": are we almost all alone -- or are we almost all alone? Is it a world where people shout, so he doesn't want to talk it over - or are people shouting "I don't want to talk it over"?

paint it black wrote:This is about von not getting his end away

A bar that's always closing is his girlfriend's fanny flaps, like them saloon doors in the spaghetti westerns

Chaotican wrote: ↑25 Jul 2018, 04:25 A petty jab at an ex? I knew I shouldn’t have clicked, yet how could I resist a fairly fresh analysis of a song that has made it into my playlists for the last few weeks. Juxtaposing nicely with Under The Gun, in fact, except I think you’re probably all correct. (Which kind of validates my interpretation in a morbid way, but that’s a silent thought for a more sober hour.)

Still, I’ll offer my take.

I hear a self-deception that has inevitably crumbled. The conversation is with oneself as a respite from isolation gives way to reality. The giddy haze of a willing delusion, making plans and imagining “meant forever�. Trading clarity and truth for a temporary bout of hope just for a break in the monotony of existence.

But it only works if the hope is genuine. Even just for a moment. If you can doubt your solitude for long enough to spark a genuine experience of an imaginary better place. Before you admit you were wrong and go about carrying on without that impossible beauty.

I hear “I can love my fellow man, but I’m damned if I’ll love yours� as a condemnation of humanity in general. Either there is a mythical elevated species that the narrator believes he belongs to or else it is a cynical acknowledgment that we are all doomed to flounder around as these meat-based creatures who evolved not to achieve lofty ideals but to survive. In the latter case, the song is an inner dialogue. The Self can only love its own creations, which can never manifest for long in a fellow human.

The comfort we seek from each other is also hollow. I don’t want to talk this over. I don’t want to play the role of the wounded while we run through the tedious social conventions and bonding rituals of sympathy and comfort. That may be what friends are for, but it is yet another element I can get along without.

In short, disappointment but also a homecoming to a place of reality and strength. Until next time, assuming an ever lengthening refractory period allows for such a thing.