What do you think He Doesn't Know Why means?

Fleet Foxes: He Doesn't Know Why Meaning

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Album cover for He Doesn't Know Why album cover

He Doesn't Know Why Lyrics

Penniless and tired, with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
Memory is a fickle siren song
I didn't understand

In the gentle light as the mornin' nears
you don't say a single word of your last two...

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  1. anonymous
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     Aug 16th 2017 !⃝

    His brother is addicted to drugs. There is nothing you can say or do to help.

  2. anonymous
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     Jul 16th 2015 !⃝

    My interpretation, is that this was written regarding the artist's friend or brother, who left home (or his hometown) to seek out a different kind of life elsewhere, specifically, one in which he was, as the lyrics describe, a vagrant (possibly living by choice as a homeless person).

    When the weary friend returns home, he looks different than he did before, clutching his last silver dollar, his hair ragged, thinking that maybe "coming back home" was what he was searching for. He'd pull the wool over his eyes like he did before (and disregard the man he'd become as a traveller), and try to be the man he was before he left. He would think maybe the answer he was looking for laid in the return to his family, for a week or so, and in becoming who he was before. But his destiny was really elsewhere.

    And as a friend, or brother, there was nothing (the singer) could offer as a suggestion, or to offer solice. Nothing he could say or do to help him. The journey was his, and only his.


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