Recently I purchased The Best of the Talking Heads from iTunes. On it was the song (Nothing But) Flowers.
I like the song: the melody, the vocals, whatever it is that makes one like a Talking Heads song. I listened to it a couple times the last couple days and started noticing lyrics like "There was a factory, now there are mountains and rivers" and "There was a Pizza Hut, now it's all covered with Daisies." Pretty standard "return to Eden"-type sentiments.
Then I noticed "if this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower" and at the end "Don't leave me stranded here, I can't get used to this lifestyle." This added an interesting layer to the ideas presented by the song.
Let me tell you the three layers that I see in the order that I thought of them. First, the hippie, environmentalist, return-to-Eden view where things were better when they were simpler. Second is recognizing the fact that we might not enjoy things if we "went back". Recognizing that it would be hard to "get used to this lifestyle." My third interpretation is some kind of sophisticated hippie who thinks that while it would be hard to get used to living without Pizza Hut and 7 Eleven, it would still be better. This sophisticated Luddite makes fun of the whining portrayed in the song.
Unless we talk to the David Byrne, we can't know what he was thinking. Even if we did talk to him, he may not have an answer for us.
