The bearable meaning of song lyrics

When I was fourteen, and the Weezer blue album was new, I remember having a conversation with my Dad. “Daddy,” I said, “when they sing: ‘I write these stupid words/And I love everyone’, do you think they mean they love every one, as in everybody, or every one of these stupid words?”

It was a question of some importance to me. And my Dad said “You know, Armand, I really don’t care.” It wasn’t an insensitive statement — he just didn’t understand why I was curious. I can’t remember if I was upset or not at the time; I suspect not, but rather just wrote it off as a generational thing.

And at various points over the last few years, I’ve lost my curiousity over things like that, and have been worried that I’ve fallen up a generation. But for the last few months, I’ve been curious again. Maybe it’s just that I’m doing more writing at the moment, of song lyrics, the novel etc. But it’s nice to think idly about these things again, as they flit in and out of the pile of things that matter to me. And its a big pile.