Hozier: No Plan Meaning
Song Released: 2019
No Plan Lyrics
What a waste to say the heart could feel apart
Or feel complete, baby
Why would you make out of words
A cage for your own bird?
When it sings so sweet
The screaming, heaving fuckery of the world?
Why would you offer her name
To...
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No Plan is a death ballad that speaks to the futility of being. Lines such as: "there will be darkness again" frames life as transient that from darkness we came and to darkness we shall return. A complete rejection of the concept of heaven and its insignificance even if it exists because one day the universe will come to an end and we will end with it as we cannot exist outside of it.
The cosmic themes explored in this song are derived from a public lecture by Katherine Mack an astrophysicist who has theorized five possible scenarios that could lead to the end of the universe.
Andrew Byrne is daringly nihilistic in this song proclaiming the non-existence of a higher power. Lines such as: "there is no hand on the reign" means that there is no God in charge and "there is no plan" and "there is no kingdom to come" means that there is no heaven or reward for the righteous.
It also speaks to the depravity that is a subsequent result of religious inclination that through worrying about the afterlife we deprive ourselves of the only known human experience.
The blue bird in a cage reference speaks to the trap that we create for ourselves by defining life and creating rules that suppress our carnal desires. Religion is the cage and we are the birds and birds do not belong in cages. Birds should fly freely in the sky defining their own path with no restriction.
If you allow yourself to enjoy life and watch "the sunlight fade" only then do you derive meaning from a seemingly pointless endeavor.
The song speaks to the existential question of being: why are we here? Through religion and culture we have tried to define life and that very rigidity of definition is the cage that keeps the bird trapped. Life is objectively meaningless and only through love and other worldly joys do we create value where there is not any.
Instead of trying to understand life we can simply just live because there is no plan. We are just here and that is it. One day we will seize to exist and all of this will be for nothing. The death of the universe will erase it all. So you might as well enjoy life while you are still here and break free from the cage.
Written by:
Njabulo Malusi Buthelezi
You can contact me on: njabulo@homemail.co.za -
He is telling his lover to live in the moment, be free of
getting bogged down by the many fruitless plans or trappings of conventional living. My favorite line: " my heart is thrilled by the still of your hand." describes what an antidote it can be to find someone who's not just trying to be about sex but appreciating life for what it is, and also not that it can't be sex positive but he likes his lover for not only being about that.
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