The Recognition Scene
Lyrics
we broke the doorknob off of the door.
the door swung open easily.
we sauntered into the poorly lit store,
and looked around lazily.
we stole every bit of candy they had inside.
gobbled it all up greedily on our 3 month[1] ride.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
you headed out to the getaway car
and hit the open road
I saw something written in tall clear letters on your face
but I could not break the code.
we had hot caramel sticking to our teeth
and the only love I've ever known burning [2] underneath
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
Banter
- This next song, much to my indescribable sadness, is a true story. It’s called The Recognition Scene, which is a term from Greek drama. It’s the point at which everybody knows everything. (1995-04-22)
- This song is about that moment when — let's say you'd been assembling a model… so you've been following the directions, and as the model begins to take shape, you see that the shape, while it is a distinct and easy-to-identify shape, is not the same one that was on the box. And it's gonna eat you alive. You didn't know it was that kind of model. If you had known, you wouldn't have bought it. (1998-04-17)
- This is a song… that's about a point in time when everything sacred goes profane. (1999-01-27)
- This is a song - well, of course it's a song, it would be weird if I was about to do a play. This is a song about how there's a moment in every relationship where you look at the person you love and you think, inside yourself, I don’t actually love you anymore. What am I gonna do now? I don't wanna say that, you know, I mean what would happen if I said that? Well, nothing would happen. I mean, you'd just have a conversation, but you think inside yourself something disastrous will happen. So you don't say nothin'. Then it's next week, and you still feel the same way, now what are you going to do? Now you've spent a week living a terrible lie! So you've already got a week invested, you might as well give it another year. That's what this song is about. (2003-06-27 - Mains d'Oeuvres, Paris)
- This takes its title from something that happens in Greek tragedy. Uh, you know, there's a moment in a Greek tragedy where everybody on the stage realizes that they're totally fucked. Right? There's this moment where everybody thinks they've been acting independently and just deciding what they were gonna do. And then, then they all look at each other, it's, like, this great moment, where, you know, Antigone looks at Creon and Creon looks at Antigone, and both of them realize it's all going to come to no goddamn good no matter what anybody says. (2003-07-02)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. "three year" (2003-06-27)
2. "raging" (2003-06-27)