Cage & Aquarium
We're not talking about the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. This is the spawning of the Cage & Aquarium.
This is a short one. A mere one minute and nine seconds. As quickly as this song starts, it comes to an end. While it may seem like a song this brief couldn’t possibly contain any real depth, nothing could be more false of an assumption.
Cage & Aquarium by They Might Be Giants is a never-skip track for me and no, not just because it’s over so quickly, why skip it? If this song were being rented out as a VHS tape, it would be resting intensely on a shelf in the Suspense/Thriller section at the age-old Hollywood Video. The bass saxophone and electric guitar play a hypnotic repeating melody. 2 notes back and forth. Wearing down the listener’s guarded ears. Grooming the eardrums for John Flansburgh and John Linnell to use their harmonic voice to bring forth your impending paranoia.
Lyrics Analysis: The Dawning and Ending of Aquarius
Your carefree life of open love and independence is a sham. Trust and understanding are nowhere to be seen. The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius has come to an end. Witness now, the spawning of the Cage and Aquarium. The harsh reality is that you, the reader, live in a constant state of influence, control, and personal privacy invasion.
Some unknown person is “reading your mind. . .”
“Digging through all of your files. . .”
“Then you hear, a moment too late, this sound coming over the phone. . .
This is the spawning of THE CAGE & AQUARIUM.”
Foil hats, windows covered in lead; all futile efforts to save you and your pets from this new reality. Cage & Aquarium seems almost specifically engineered as a brief song meant to rattle you into feeling unsure about what to expect out of life. Are things not as they seem? Did this song somehow give me unfettered anxiety or has that always been there? Sadly, the listener will not return to base level anytime soon for the next track, in my opinion, is a downright horror show.
Engagement Invitation: TMBGCT (They Might Be Giants Comment Therapy)
What kind of thoughts give you anxiety? I lived a very specific kind of childhood that primed me to be acutely aware of the emotions of those around me. Before therapy and Citalopram, predicting potential disrupts in the status quo and knowing how to mitigate them were my only ways to self-soothe. Otherwise, anxiety city.
This song evokes the unknown suspicions and paranoid thoughts my mother would voice to me about family members on too many occasions. It makes me uneasy and yet, I love to listen to it. Share your anxiety button in the comments and how you cope.
After 9/11 I was so scared of another attack on the United States. I used to listen to Man, It's So Loud in Here daily and think about what it was like in those towers. Which hapless workers at the WTC picked up that tape on their way to work that morning, had the new tunes stuck in their head, only to get stuck themselves tens of stories above lower Manhattan knowing that a 767 was embedded several stories below?
Mink Car and Ativan is to me what a delicate cheese is to an aged wine. That's my TMBG/anxiety story anyway.
One of my favorites. TMBG used to be the kings of the one-minute masterpiece (or even shorter, in Fingertips). I haven't checked the track lengths on their more recent albums, but I feel like they are all over 1 minute. I hadn't looked at the lyrics to this very closely, so I really appreciate you breaking it down and revealing how great the two Johns are at matching lyrically dark themes into lighter sounding songs.
Regarding anxiety and thoughts, I've been working to change the stories my brain tells, from what maybe worked when I was younger in terms of self-protection but no longer does, to something more open and curious. My anxiety is connected to my brain needing something to stress about, and when there's something obviously pressing (a breakup, a job change, a death in the family), it actually relaxes, as it has something to focus on. It's almost worse sometimes when it's generalized anxiety, as I feel like I "should" be joyful and not anxious.