I hear this as a song perfectly describing Joe Normal's paradigm in 1997 (the song's release year). Holding a tenuous (and ultimately neurotic) grip on the (seeming) security that they had in their comfortable, but monotonous lives, whilst remaining unconscious of the very real, if un-re-cognised deep & ancestral terror of cataclysm [*think biblical floods*].
"No alarms and no surprises, please" because there is always that murky, dark, ancestral fear of cataclysm* - kaputski to the world and everyone in it...
[*see Julian Jaynes theory of the Bicameral mind and how it mas the trauma of "world's end" - floods etc that split the psyche into the somewhat schizoid being we are today]
Before we dive (no pun intended) into the lyrics we can see, if we watch the No Surprises music video, Thom Yorke is wearing a deep sea divers' helmet throughout - indicating we're in a Neptunian, unconscious & dream-like (hypnotised?) state. We are hyper-focused on service to self (hence why only Thom's face is pictured) and we are willing to ignore the ubiquitous decay of morality, or community, of philosophy and (real) psychology.
Our outwardly necrotic society is a reflection of the psychic conditions of those who a) engineer society, but b) those who are willingly ignorant to a conspiracy and buy what "they" are selling. This is all abetted by the Marcusan (Herbert Marcuse's) ideology of control) ideology of control maintained through the encouragement of Neptune escapism, "pleasure" and illusion, but that is for another time.
But the 90s especially, well up to that fateful day in September 2001, was a kind of bubble. Everything seemed, to those with their heads at 10,0000 leagues under a materialism-induced trance at least, to be OK COMPUTER.
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So now the lyrics:
"A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal"
A heart that hasn't been "unfolded" as George Harrison would put it. Full up means no space for anything to enter, including the love of God and Self. Now a dumping ground, the heart is wasted of its true use and instead manufacturing fake care ("get ahead in the rat race"; "how to win friends and influence people"; "I'm all right Jack, keep your hands off of my stack" etc.).
Healthy, vortices that are the Heart spaces that should flow and receive Love and Compassion, are stagnant, dumped and unwanted. Yet we search and de-sire for the real McCoy, yet devour the simulacras given to us, those masquerades we (g)know are not valuAbel.. . The vicious cycle being that we are so downtrodden, disillusioned that we have no energy, or direction to even consider the clean up.
"A job that slowly kills you": The occupational/ karmic life, that does not ful-fill the Soul and one's destiny. Vocational life is liveable, even whilst holding down a 9-5 (though I quit that a long time ago), because one has a greater mission to accomplish, one that one you can authentically bring to Life.
But all too often Dharma (Destiny/ The Conjunctio) is avoided for the sake of the false security of a "job" (which can mean 'persecution').
"Bruises won't heal" (whole) because one is remaining unconscious of the traumas of childhood, of lineage and of the original (seeming) separation from SELF/ SOURCE/ GOD/ WHATEVER.
"You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
"You look so tired unhappy" - I don't think its too much of an assumption to believe that most people have had a niggling suspicion, sunk somewhere deep (Neptune) that there is something not right with the world. Despite this, however, most people are willing to only pursue happiness and be eneter-tain-D ('to enter and to control through the use of four-m)...
They buy the engineered 40 hour+ week rat race and the carrot on the stick. They are "tired" from working said 40+ hour weeks, two jobs and of being unhappy and not knowing the cause. They believe in the legitimacy of one group ("government" having the "right" to initiate violence against no-violent people), but could not conceive of a world without them. No one had time in 1997 to look at things in a side-eye kind of way. Very few had that time to invest... until 2020 that is.
"Bring down the government" - A psychic problem within our own collective consciousness (and therefore in individual psyches) is externalised as "them", the "government", it's "their fault"... And yes, of course there have been Machiavellian prosecutions of war on our consciousness and on our Abelity to resist, but the fact remains: if we ain't buying, they are destroyed ("What is undead cannot be killed").
- "They don't speak for us"... no one else can speak for you (unless incapable through illness/ incapacity etc) when it comes to the issue of Sovereignty, You must recover your Authority to speak up for your right to live your way - remember that we are in the realm of Neptune in this song, and it is the "Putting one's own needs first and to be willing to fight for your freedom" that rises from Pisces (Neptune - victims. martyrs. external saviours and into Aries (Ares/ Mars/ War/ Action).
Just as the Matrix showed, in which the simulation was set at the "pinnacle" of Man's societal advancement, those people in 1997/99, whether or not they listened to this song, were in no way prepared from the way the world would change from 2001 onwards... Terror, suspicion, grief and the constant amygdala-looshing that went on... eventually culminating in 2020's full disclosure of Clown World.
Maybe it was those years 2001-2020 (19 = The SunSon: Sovereignty) that brought so many now from their Neptunian slumber and found them willing to stand, saying "NO" to the greatest psy-op ever de-viced.
In 2020 so many realeysed that the "government" had never and would never speak for them.
"I'll take a quiet life,
A handshake of carbon monoxide"
- It's quiet and dreamlike, autonomic, in that Neptunian realm. Passive.
Especially if one is blissing out on their drug, person, insertSurrogateforSELFhere.
- What is that Nas said "I never sleep, because sleep is the cousin of death"?
The "handshake of carbon monoxide" is the Thanatos (death) drive that ultimately takes one if they do not begin their journey toward Dharma and, a relationship with the Unconscious (Neptune), but whilst committing to RIGHT ACTION, as far as possible at least.
For we are fallible and any obsession over perfection will only, through what Jung called 'Enantiodromia', bring about antagonistic, constellated & synchronistic events that show you that you, Icarus/ Phaeton, must fall to reclaim the leaden shadow you could not allow into your being.
The majority of 21st Century Hu(l)mans have been slowly committing suicide through insertBIGCORPseORATION'sPoisonhere; almost an attitude of "get it over"... and who can blame them when the table has been tilted 66.6 degrees against them and the (false) kings hold (or perhaps HELD) all the cards they need (FIAT and title deeds) .
"This is my final fit,
My final bellyache with
No alarms and no surprises"
- belly ache is your sacral chakra - desire, wither to consume or to create. Consumerism and the plastic-ness, the recycled air of the shopping mall, the soul-sucking nature of corp(se)oritisation, and far more sorrowful: the willingness of Dasman to march obediently to the pied clown's tune. The resulting bellyache is no doubt the reason why Gaviscon (or whatever the U.S. equivalent is) is probably one of the leading over the counter pHARMacartel products sold, year in year out.
BUT WHATEVER YOU DO! Don't tell the 1997 Dasman any of this, because the chthonic fear that is bubbling underneath his wavering, and Neptuniany & befuddled state, might just lead a man to the carbon monoxide way out. Besides, not many of us would even know to speak to someone about this back then.
"Thank goodness that tin-foil hat-wearing- 90s conspiracy theorist pony-tailed loon has left", I hear the echoes from another life (or last week).
- Aaaaah "Such a pretty house
And such a pretty garden"...
["I own both and I am happy, and nothing (*unconsciousgrumbles*) could take away that...". bellygrumbles'
"Now where is that alka-seltzer?"]
...and consider that 2008 is yet to come (this being 1997), with so many homes seized by the banksters.
In conclusion, I have heard many, many people state that they hate this song because it's depressing. Well, yes, but sadness isn't a wrongness. Great art, and I'll let you determine if this song is that, evokes (oftentimes) the most grief-sodden, terror-raising and rage inducing states of human experience imaginable.
And may it always stay that way.