Dare to Decide

If it's spring, why is the water so cold (repeated a few times)
Why does ambition take the form of self-acceptance?
Why can't I breathe here? Why is love so (can't remember)
Why is hate so comfortable?
Freedom is sour. It's all I can do to wash the taste out.

Ok, let's start with the first line: if it's spring, why is the water so cold? This line featured prominently in another song. I can't remember now which one was written first, but the other one was a mess ... stuff I felt passionately about mixed in with things I had chosen merely for their interesting turns of phrase or imagery. And too many ideas at once. It also borrowed a little too much from Ezra Pound for me to feel comfortable propounding it as my own work.

This line is kind of a lament: it's supposed to be the springtime of my life, but everything seems so hollow. Nothing seems to work as it should. The answer should be obvious: the water in mountain streams is cold in spring because it is fed primarily by melting snow. To look for the source of the emptiness, you have to look further back ... and perhaps wait for spring to have passed. This might be somehow tied in to the delay of wisdom ("I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger"). Utter futility.

The rest is fairly straightforward, except for "Freedom is sour, it's all I can do to wash the taste out." This line formed the core of another song, "Freedom" from the same period (again, I'm not sure which came first). This was not a bad song, but the song itself said nothing further than this line and I got tired of it after a while. It says, hey, freedom is great, but what have I done with it? It's all I can do to forget the damage I've done (or maybe, who I am) in my freedom (a rough equivalent; it's less about moral license than about identity).