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“Some people try and tell you what the songs are about, and it bores me to death.” — so spoke Lars Ulrich, the thunderous drummer of Metallica, a man who forged rhythm into rebellion and turned sound into storm. Yet beneath the bluntness of his words lies a wisdom that the ancients themselves would have recognized: that art is not meant to be caged by explanation. When Ulrich rejects the dissection of meaning, he is not scorning thought — he is defending mystery. For the soul of music, like the soul of man, loses its fire when it is reduced to analysis.

In the age of the ancients, poets knew this truth well. When Homer sang of Achilles or Sappho of love, they did not pause to explain. The song was the meaning, and the listener was the interpreter. Each heart found in it what it was ready to receive. So too does Ulrich remind us that the power of a song — or any creation — lies not in the intention of its maker, but in the connection it awakens. To demand explanation is to flatten the mystery, to trade wonder for certainty. And what is certainty but a graveyard where imagination is buried?

The meaning of Ulrich’s words also reflects the eternal tension between creator and critic. The critic seeks to label, to define, to carve understanding into neat shapes. But the artist speaks a different language — one of emotion, instinct, and transcendence. When Ulrich says he is “bored to death” by explanations, it is because he feels the life of art draining away under the scalpel of intellect. For art is born from the unspeakable, and to confine it to words alone is to rob it of breath. Music is not meant to be understood — it is meant to be felt.

Consider the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who, when asked what his symphonies meant, simply gestured toward the heavens and said, “It means this.” Deaf and defiant, he knew that music speaks directly to the soul, bypassing the mind’s need for explanation. To him, and to Ulrich centuries later, the act of interpretation was secondary — even irrelevant. What mattered was the emotional truth, the shared heartbeat between creator and listener. The ancients might have called this communion, the divine spark that leaps from one soul to another through beauty.

Ulrich’s quote, though modern in its tone, carries an ancient spirit — a rebellion against the tyranny of overthinking. For not all things are meant to be dissected. Some must simply be lived. The same is true of love, faith, grief, and awe — the vast, wordless experiences that shape our humanity. The moment we demand that every mystery justify itself, we lose the ability to feel deeply. Thus his impatience with those who seek “what the songs are about” is not arrogance; it is a defense of the sacred silence within art — the space where each listener may discover their own meaning.

This truth extends beyond music. In life, too, people will demand explanations for your passion, your dreams, your art, your choices. They will ask, “What does it mean? What are you trying to say?” And there will be times when you must answer as Ulrich did — not with disdain, but with conviction: It is not for me to tell you what it means. It is for you to feel. For meaning is not handed down from the creator; it is born anew in every soul that encounters the work.

Therefore, O listener of tomorrow, take this wisdom to heart: do not kill mystery in your hunger for understanding. When you hear a song, or see a painting, or stand beneath a starry sky — resist the urge to dissect. Instead, let it move you. Let it awaken something ancient and wordless within. For the deepest truths are not explained; they are experienced. As Lars Ulrich reminds us, art lives only as long as it remains wild, free, and untamed by reason — and when we let it breathe, we, too, are made alive.