What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game

Cafe Society
1

Andrew Hickey’s song #167 is “Sympathy for the Devil” and of course that worm has drilled deep into my aural orifice. What’s puzzling me is…

  1. Is the devil’s game about puzzling you?
    or
  2. Are you puzzled about the nature of the devil’s game?

Blockquote

2

What’s puzzling you is the nature of this line…

3

I’ve always thought it’s #2.

Also, how could he have held a general’s rank and still drive a tank? Generals like to stay well away from the front - generally.

4

Nobody puts the devil in a corner.

5

I don’t know about simple plain generals, but Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel did ride tanks in the Sahara and it seems he enjoyed it:


But I always thought it’s #2 too. It’s in the nature of the devil’s game to be puzzling to us mere mortals. Being puzzling per se is not his game, it is the inevitable result from our perspective.

6

Woo, woo.

mmm

7

In the cover by Jane’s Addiction, Perry Farrell clearly sings “and a nation screamed in vain”.

I always wanted to tell him about Anastasia and her sisters.

8

Huh, I didn’t know. Then I suppose Jagger was pretty pointed about who he meant in his lyric.

9

I read it as number 2 but it’s a lovely ambiguity.

10

So did Patton, when he was cursing his guys from an aircraft during war games.

11

I think the real question is why troubadours were heading towards Bombay.

12

Maybe it has something to do with the word bomb hidden in plain sight in Bomb-ay?
And troubadours, of course, for the trouble.

13

#2
Does the Devil want to punish sinners? Or does he want to encourage and reward them as a F U to God?

I guess that’s why he deserves our sympathy.

14

You wanted something deeper? Okay.

The singer makes a big deal out of the listener guessing his name. Late in the song, he says “call me Lucifer”.

But notice he doesn’t say his name actually is Lucifer. And even after he tells the listener to call him that, he still makes a point about the listener guessing his name.

So here’s a possibility; the singer isn’t Satan. He’s God. It was God not Satan who did all the violent things the singer describes. The listener is supposed to understand this and realize it’s God not Satan who causes evil to happen in the world. Satan aka the Devil is just a being that God has arranged to take the blame for things that God does. So understanding the nature of God’s game is what puzzles the listener.

15

I’ve heard that line is a Beatles reference. The Beatles were singers aka troubadours. And the song was written around the time they had been traveling to India.

16

That sounds like a coherent explanation, but bear in mind the Stones were stoned when writing this, so any association of ideas is possible and they themselves have probably forgotten by now what made them laugh back then.

17

But did “Lucifer” actually do anything? He observes the evil but I don’t think he commits any. He would be God letting evil happen which is not a bad interpretation.

And Lucifer meaning “light-bearer” can mean more than Satan. Isn’t there an old prayer that refers to Jesus as “lucifer”?

18

I can think of a few generals who got very close to tanks - Patton, Sherman, Abrams… :wink:

Patton, at least, physically rode around on a tank at times, too. I don’t think he drove it, though. A tank’s driver is not the commander (talk about back seat driving…)

19

Given the reference to Blitzkrieg, perhaps even more on point is Erich von Manstein, who devised the strategy for attacking France through the Ardennes. He led tank corps into Poland, France, and eventually Russia, all while holding various “General” ranks.

20

Plus, he says that just after bringing up several contradictions:

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer