Song Meaning

Devendra Banhart's "Shown and Told" operates as a psychological x-ray, revealing the self-inflicted wounds of perception and the numbing effect of repeated trauma. The opening lines, "Waking up you want to see / Who's it you want paralyzed," immediately establish a dynamic of control and vulnerability, suggesting a desire to fixate and potentially disable an external target. However, the subsequent lines, "You see what you want to see / And its you that you've done hypnotized," twist the blade, implicating the observer as the primary victim of their own selective vision. It's a closed circuit of self-deception, where the act of observation becomes a form of self-hypnosis. The repeated line, "There are corners of your home / You've never noticed before," functions as a metaphor for the unexamined aspects of one's own psyche, the repressed memories and unresolved conflicts that lurk in the shadows of the subconscious. The chorus, if it can be called that, is the stark and repetitive declaration: "And you're numb and you're numb and you know that you're numb." This isn't just feelinglessness; it's the conscious recognition of emotional shutdown, a defense mechanism against overwhelming pain. The lyrics then delve into a more specific, almost surreal, landscape of personal history with lines like "Hermaphrodite stepfather / Just pollinate and don't bother the flower" and "My generous mother has set off to sail / Her genuflect offering faith in betrayal." These lines, while opaque on the surface, evoke themes of distorted family dynamics, gender ambiguity, and the painful collision of faith and betrayal. Ultimately, the song meaning of "Shown and Told" resides in its exploration of how we construct our own realities and the price we pay for doing so. Banhart seems to suggest that the act of seeing is inherently subjective and that this subjectivity can lead to a kind of paralysis, a self-imposed imprisonment within the confines of our own perceptions. The numbness, then, becomes not just a symptom of trauma, but a consequence of our own limited and self-serving ways of seeing the world. The song is a haunting reminder that true understanding requires confronting the uncomfortable corners of our own internal landscape.