Help me decipher these lyrics

Factual Questions
1

This might be a question for Cafe Society, but since I think the question has a ‘factual answer’ I put it here. Feel free to move it, if you see fit.

Anywho…

There’s a song by They Might Be Giants called “No One Knows My Plan”. The song is sort of a riddle that I just can’t figure out. First, here are the lyrics:

OK 98% of the song is straightforward. The guy committed some kind of crime. Someone saw his silhouette in the window and called the cops. The cops and witnesses are ignorant of what was really going on:

Where that Greek guy is Plato and the allegory is about the enlightenment of a philosopher.

My question is about the “smell of burning autumn leaves”. Does this have any significance? I imagine that something smells like burning autumn leaves in the way that arsenic tastes like almonds, but can’t find a reference.

Any one know his plan?

2

[nitpick]Cyanide tastes like almonds, arsenic is sort of garlic flavoured, but neither are suitable for ordinary cuisine.[/nitpick]

Dunno the answer to your question though; the little I know of the band and their songs would lean me toward the tentative conclusion that maybe it isn’t supposed to mean anything much.

3

Thanks for straightening me out on the cyanide and arsenic thing. I know you call it a ‘nitpick’ but I’d rather know when I’m misinformed, especially when it comes to what poison tastes like.

I’m pretty sure it means something. I’m a big fan and haven’t found too much nonesense. But then again, it may only mean something to the person in the song, I’m not sure.

But one thing I am sure of, if there’s an answer, someone here will find it.

4

One note is that the “people chained up in the cave” in Plato’s Cave aren’t enlightened; rather, they’re forced to look at nothing but silhouettes on the cave wall, and so they interpret the shadows as reality. At least, that’s how I’ve heard it described before; I haven’t read it.

My interpretation of the song has been rather vague: that John has been wrongfully imprisoned based on the testimony of his neighbors, who only a saw a shadow and mistook it for evidence of a crime, and that now he’s in solitary confinement, going mad, talking to himself (his mirror) and his iron bars. He thinks he has secret plans for escape and other endeavors, but he gets stuck on minutiae and hasn’t really planned anything all the way through. My interpretation is similar to what you’ll find at http://www.tmbg.org/band-info/songs/interp/NoOneKnowsMyPlan.html . Sorry I can’t make more of the “burning autumn leaves” though.

Aaron T.

5

It’s been a while since I tried to crack open a TMBG song (the last one I really picked apart was “The End of the Tour”, and before that “See the Constellation”) but this one sounds like it’s in the same vein as “My Evil Twin” and “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go”. For my interpretation, the key line is

you, my mirror
you, my iron bars

We can read this as him talking to his prison possessions (all you own are the mirror and the iron bars). But what if he’s talking to “you, my mirror, who are also my iron bars”? What if he is talking to himself in the mirror (or talking out of the mirror to the self on the other side), in the belief that he is somehow possessed? Then his “plan” may be to be convicted and executed, because whatever-it-is won’t let him kill himself!

Now, our picture of the initial events is skewed: maybe he was committing a crime, or maybe he pulled down the window shade (a la Home Alone) to project an image that others would certainly report. As you pointed out, the allegory of the cave is that the people who see the shadows can only guess at what the true forms are. I think that allegory has another meaning: those who see the narrator on a daily basis only see his “shadow” and not his “true form”.

At that point, “Why the dancing, shouting? Why the shrieks of pain, the lovely music? Why the smell of burning autumn leaves?” can be read as (1) events that occurred in the commission of the crime, or (2) hallucinations. Combine it with “I must be silent” and you’ve got (1) A man faking a crime by screaming at high volume and burning a fake “body” to explain the lack of a victim when the police show up, or (2) a man committing a real crime in the hopes of being killed, and keeping silent about the voices in his head so that he won’t get off on an insanity defense–because if he dies, then the thing in his head also dies, and he hates it enough to die with it.

I’m not entirely sure, but like Mangetout said, sometimes their songs are what you make them (I’m thinking of “Cowtown”). This one may have a meaning, or it may be a spooky narrative that sets your brain itching. Why, indeed, the smell of burning autumn leaves?

6

sorry, this is even more of a nitpick. I was under the impression that cyanide (I believe) smelled like almonds, but only like 5% of the population can actually smell it. I remember watching a forensic show where the medical examiner was one of those few people that can smell cyanide and he opened up a body and caught a whif and immediately ordered tests for cyanide, something another person might not have done. And they caught the guy.

7

Smell and taste are pretty much the same thing for things more complex that salty/sweet/bitter/sour/umamé - I’d imagine that cyanide tastes of almonds too, for a short period of time, anyway. I’m not volunteering to sample it.

8

From Wikipedia:

Now, about those burning autumn leaves…

9

Well, burning leaves (and you get more at autumn) produces a lot of carbon monoxide, poisoning by which can lead to memory/cognitive problems thus blocking your “enlightenment”?

That’s the best I can do, sorry.

10

I believe the speaker of the song is insane and in a mental institution. The music and smell of burning leaves are hullicinations perhaps caused by Schizophrenia. It would certainly fit the rest of the song.