Dirty Projectors – Gun Has No Trigger Lyrics
Stretched in the background
You'd see the oceans swirl
And the mountains shook
You'd see a million colors
If you really looked
Now, quick the night draws near
Her curtain spreads quicker
The safety's off
But the gun has no trigger
If you had looked, you'd be no one's coward
Distance, justice, power
You'd glimpse the password
You wouldn't need the book
You'd own both slave and master
If you just had looked
But now the banks all closed
And nothing gets bigger
The crowd will yell
But the gun has no trigger
If you had looked, you might reconsider
Or just maybe you already have
They watch you sleeping
You watch their garbage cook
You'd weep a bowl of tears
If you had looked
But now the gate comes down
The pangs are growing dimmer
You hold a gun to your head
But the gun has no trigger
Is it counter-productive to try to translate individual lines for a song like Gun has no Trigger? Songwriter and bandleader David Longstreth has said “… it seemed almost anachronistic to have a discrete thought in terms of lyrics: they’re so impressionistic, that it’s just like, this can mean whatever you want it to mean to you, and I’m not going to commit to it having a specific meaning for me.” Stereogum.
Stil, he has offered us a general explanation. “Gun Has No Trigger is about the possibility for true dissent, and how I can’t figure out what that could be. What is a 2012 Exodus from the Society of the Spectacle (to mix language Situationist and Rastafari)? So we made a video from the iconography of the default profile image used by Facebook and Gmail, and also the look of the classic Apple iPod commercials.” (Rolling Stone interview).
If it’s any help, the first video for this song was a “cuneiform karaoke” cut. Well, RapGenius Sumer is dropping soon…
Recall that Dave Longstreth also once translated an excerpt of Run-DMC’s “It’s Like That” into Esperanto on his reimagining of Black Flag’s “Six Pack.”
