Radiohead: Arpeggi Meaning

Arpeggi Lyrics

In the deepest ocean
The bottom of the sea
Your eyes, they turn me
Why should I stay here?
Why should I stay?
I'd be crazy not to follow
Follow where you lead
Your eyes, they turn me
Sunk without a trace
The bottom of the deep
Your...

1. JGlass

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   Jun 19th 2009 !⃝

   My reading of this song, as well as several others, is that Thom feels trapped, and so he would like to escape. However, in escaping he would have to deal with guilt, so he hopes a supernatural force will free him.
   Thom said of Letdown: “It's also about an enormous fear of being trapped.” And Thom often writes about his wish to escape: “Everybody leaves if they get the chance,” “I go where I please…I’m not here,” “Today we escape,” “just cross yourself and walk away,” “Do yourself a favour and pack your bags/ Buy a ticket and get on the train,” “One day I am gonna grow wings,” “Let’s go down the waterfall /think about the good times and never look back.”
   Thom is conflicted about whether he should fulfill his desire to escape, primarily based on his guilt associated with leaving. In describing Knives Out, Thom said “It's partly the idea of the businessman walking out on his wife and kids and never coming back.” The “businessman” is a symbol that Thom rebels against in No Surprises, Fitter Happier, Palo Alto and Wolf at The Door, to name a few. In other words, Thom would feel guilty if he acted as the “businessman”. In Videotape, Thom says: “This is my way of saying goodbye cause I can’t do it face to face.” Likely again because he does not want to tell the other person he is “leaving.”
   Thom fighting against his own guilt surfaces in Nude (“don't go, you'll only want to come back again”) and There There (“don't reach out, don't reach out”) as well as Mr. Magpie (“you know you should, but you don’t”).
   Therefore, Thom wishes an outside, typically supernatural, force will free him. In How To Disappear Completely, Thom says “I go where I please…I float down the Liffey,” though in an interview he described the dream that inspired the song: “I was floating down the Liffey and there was nothing I could do.” By putting these two ideas together, it is clear that Thom wanted to float away, and yet it was out of his control, so he didn’t have to consciously decide to leave. This theme also appears in Subterranean Homesick Alien: “I wish that they'd swoop down… take me aboard their beautiful ship.” Again, Thom wishes to leave but he is literally abducted, and thus is not in control of his exit. In Pyramid Song, it is the black-eyed angels who take Thom away. In In Limbo Thom says “I’m lost at sea don’t bother me” which again shows that his exit was out of his control, but he is glad it happened. And in Arpeggi, Thom does not choose to leave but the “eyes” turn him, and Thom realizes that he would be “crazy not to follow.” When facing mortality, in two different songs, Thom reaches out and pleads: “you can offer me escape,” and “today we escape….I can’t do this alone.”

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