anonymous August 17th, 2006 08:24PM  
It's a song about faith. It couild be faith in anything, but just faith. It's all understood, even if we don't actually understand it. It's hard to explain.

"and fact is only what you believe
and fact and fiction work as a team"

The only things people label as "fact" is what they belive. Fact isn't based on real truth anymore. Without lies there would be no facts, and with out facts no one could make lies because there would nothing to prove it was a lie.

anonymous October 19th, 2007 01:59PM  
This song is a criticism of religion, especially fanatical religious faith.

anonymous April 20th, 2009 11:16PM  
This song is largely critical of blind faith, especially placing blind faith in religious doctrines like the Bible. It’s talking about how people tend to act and believe as they society expects them to believe, not based on their own rationality and logic. The first part is easy enough: “this part is good and that’s well understood, so you should laugh if you know what I mean” is basically the voice of societal expectations to laugh at a certain part of a movie, even if it’s not funny. This is obviously a metaphor for a larger issue – blind faith in general. The most important part of this idea is in the lines, “I read somewhere that you've got to beware, you can't believe anything you read. But the good book is good and it's all understood, so don't even question if you know what I mean.” This part particularly moved me. It also deals with the hypocrisy of religion, since society accepts that one must be skeptical about what believe (“it’s almost always fiction in the end”), yet assumes that the Bible is an exception. It’s an absolutely beautiful song. My favorite of his and some of my favorite lyrics ever.