Rain King - Intellectual

This song isn’t about love (at least according to the songwriter) so the queen isn’t a lady he has his eye on but rather a purpose or goal. The song is about a person in doubt about his direction and he wants to know one way or another what he’s destined to do in life. Uncertainty (being in between) is uncomfortable for him and what he wants to get out of.

The writer is feeling pressured about people or society telling him he should choose a certain path in life. He’s not necessarily satisfied with his current situation, but hopes it will take him further in life, because he feels he deserves it after all the work he’s put in

In the book Henderson The Rain King that helped inspire this song, Henderson encounters the Arnewi tribe, whose matriarch teaches him about grun-tu-molani: actively desiring to live. In exchange, he attempts to perform a valuable service for the Arnewi and their queen.

By referencing this episode of Henderson The Rain King, the writer is indicating that he under these circumstances feels and understands this actively wanting to live and live with clarity.

A reference to the role that ravens/crows play in Celtic and certain Native American mythologies, where they carry or escort souls of the dead into the afterlife.

Feathers is also referenced in “Angel of Silences” so that’s a symbol that the songwriter likes to use. Pens are an instrument of expression and by flying into a sea of pens, the author is taking a book that meant a lot to him “Henderson and the Rain King” and reinterpreting it in his own way.

The author read a book called “The Rain King” that he was inspired by. He’s mentioned in interviews that he was more inspired by the feeling of it than the actual content of the book, so he simply sees himself as embodying the spirit of the book he read.

Night is the phrase of introspection for him. that it’s effortless is that these questions he asks himself are just non-stop but he’s also searching for a grounding force in spite of this uncertainty

This is a narrator focusing on the upper levels of Manslow’s hirearchy of needs. He’s alive but he wants things like a higher purpose and actualization.

He could be referencing his mother which could make sense because the second line is about the author comparing himself to a frightened kid going through introspection.

Mama could refer to the person he’s going to.

This is a song where the author is working out his ideals and what he wants out of life. With that in mind, there’s a part of him that wants to not have that confusion. He wants to be able to have some black-and-white thinking. Something he can go to that he wants and something that he doesn’t want.

Adam Duritz from during VH1 Storytellers on August 12, 1997:

“I read this book in college when I was at Berkeley called ‘Henderson, the Rain King’
and the main character in the book was kind of this big, open-wound of a person, Eugene Henderson, He just sort of bled all over everyone around him
For better or for worse, full of joy, full of sorrow
He just made a mess of everything
and when I wrote the song years later it didn’t really have anything to do with the book
except the book had kind of become a totem for how I felt about creativity and writing
that it was just this thing where you just took everything inside of you
and just sort of sprayed it all over everything
and not to worry too much about it, I mean
You try and craft it but not to be self-conscious about it, in any case
And, it’s sort of a song about everything that goes into writing, all the feelings
everything that makes you want to write, makes you want to maybe pick up a guitar and do it
and express yourself because it’s full of all the doubts and the fears
about how I felt about my life at that time
And also the feeling that I really deserved something better
than what I had accomplished up to that point
I think it is sort of a religious song about the sort of undefinable thing inside you
or out there somewhere that makes you write, makes you create,
makes you do any kind of art form, you know
And makes me The Rain King”