Live - Throwing Copper

I miss my dad the most on Sunday, so i thought i'd share a very personal memory with you.

He bought this actual copy of Live's Throwing Copper for me as reward for doing my geometry homework. I don't know if he really had the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle switched in his mind (i doubt it), or if i was going though one of my not caring about school phases (i had a few), or if he just wanted to see if he could make me doubt myself (he couldn't). He bet me a CD, i won the bet, and i chose this gem of 90s social angst.

Coincidentally, it's an album about communication, or lack thereof. It's an album about death, and how we crumble under its inevitability, accepting the torture of mindless labors for a delusional feeling of belonging. The album starts with suicide, and ends with "i can't start 'til i'm dead," and we just keep on spinning. That's harsh.

The album itself is a semiotic masterpiece, because the overall meaning of each song is crystal clear, while leaving the details to the listener. You are not Ed, but you are a fellow human. You give the work meaning, and in doing so become the ego that the work is trying to tear down.

The songs themselves are not specifically related, but their collective identities under a nebulous title add up to a larger coherent meaning. At the uppermost analytical level, the only objective facts are life and death; the two cannot be separated or condensed, and our value as humans depends on how we travel from one to the other, mindful or not of our fellow passengers.

Go give it a listen from that perspective, and see if it makes more sense.

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