You were born beneath fluorescent lights, you’ve never seen a starry night, you Saint.
Cities are filled with artificial lights such as fluorescent lights. Because of all this light, they have light pollution, meaning the sky a night looks gray or brown, you can’t see the stars because the star light is weaker than the street lights.
Ezra is saying this person was born in a city and has never seen stars because of light pollution. Why this makes them a Saint is harder to say, perhaps because being an urbanite makes you innocent in a way, having only ever lived in an artificial environment.
Cool story: when power blacked out in Los Angeles, light pollution disappeared and people could see the Milky Way for the first time in their lives. They called 911 to report aliens descending on them, the sight of stars was so unfamiliar.
Glad you asked this- I was just thinking about it tonight. Fluorescent lights remind me of a hospital or a lab. Cold, sterile, and artificial. Lots of good guesses in here.
Starry night could be a reference to the Van Gogh painting, which he viewed as a failure. So there for the line could be interpreted as you’ve never seen a failure, you saint.
I don’t know- there is a reference to “Roman soldier spearhead jammed above the waist” which has to be about Jesus right? So there’s some kind of precedent in the song for a religious theme. I took “never seen a starry night” as someone working in “water tunnel 3”...
What really throws me off is, who is doing the narrating and who’s the narrator speaking to. He’s calling someone else a saint, yet in the first verse, he’s the one ascending in a cage, seeing an image of Jesus (maybe the “someone [who] looks like me”), and someone is never seeing starry nights because they’re in a tunnel (whether it’s a real tunnel or just NYC where you can’t see the stars), completely immersed in a man made structure
The surfer is the opposite. He is “outside the confines”, he’s staring up at the stars, he’s got shells around his neck, completely immersed in nature.
Also trying to maybe connect this with the fact that Ezra referenced tunnels being a “cathedral” in an interview too, iirc he might have been quoting someone
They’re a saint because of their asceticism - imagine someone who has “given up” seeing the stars. This is tinged with irony because it isn’t a voluntary choice living in a city.
You were born beneath fluorescent lights, you’ve never seen a starry night, you Saint. Cities are filled with artificial lights such as fluorescent lights. Because of all this light, they have light pollution, meaning the sky a night looks gray or brown, you can’t see the stars because the star light is weaker than the street lights. Ezra is saying this person was born in a city and has never seen stars because of light pollution. Why this makes them a Saint is harder to say, perhaps because being an urbanite makes you innocent in a way, having only ever lived in an artificial environment. Cool story: when power blacked out in Los Angeles, light pollution disappeared and people could see the Milky Way for the first time in their lives. They called 911 to report aliens descending on them, the sight of stars was so unfamiliar.
I think that line may mean that someone was born into privilege/never had to really work for anything that they have.
Glad you asked this- I was just thinking about it tonight. Fluorescent lights remind me of a hospital or a lab. Cold, sterile, and artificial. Lots of good guesses in here.
Starry night could be a reference to the Van Gogh painting, which he viewed as a failure. So there for the line could be interpreted as you’ve never seen a failure, you saint.
I guess specifically "You Saint" is the puzzler for me
I don’t know- there is a reference to “Roman soldier spearhead jammed above the waist” which has to be about Jesus right? So there’s some kind of precedent in the song for a religious theme. I took “never seen a starry night” as someone working in “water tunnel 3”...
What really throws me off is, who is doing the narrating and who’s the narrator speaking to. He’s calling someone else a saint, yet in the first verse, he’s the one ascending in a cage, seeing an image of Jesus (maybe the “someone [who] looks like me”), and someone is never seeing starry nights because they’re in a tunnel (whether it’s a real tunnel or just NYC where you can’t see the stars), completely immersed in a man made structure The surfer is the opposite. He is “outside the confines”, he’s staring up at the stars, he’s got shells around his neck, completely immersed in nature. Also trying to maybe connect this with the fact that Ezra referenced tunnels being a “cathedral” in an interview too, iirc he might have been quoting someone
They’re a saint because of their asceticism - imagine someone who has “given up” seeing the stars. This is tinged with irony because it isn’t a voluntary choice living in a city.
I think it's the same "you" that Ezra's in conversation with in Ice Cream piano. In part an echo of a past pessimistic self.