Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod

Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod
	;
Album	The Sunset Tree
Released	2005
Artist	the Mountain Goats
Length	3:22
Previous Track	Lion's Teeth
Next Track	Magpie

Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod is the ninth song on the album The Sunset Tree. It also appears as the 32nd song on the 2021 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 3 and 4.

Lyrics[]

You are sleeping off your demons
When I come home
Spittle bubbling on your lips
Fine white foam

I am young and I am good.
It's a hot southern California day
If I wake you up, there will be hell to pay

And alone in my room,
I am the last of a lost civilization
And I vanish into the dark
And rise above my station
Rise above my station

But I do wake you up, and when I do
You blaze down the hall and you scream
I'm in my room with the headphones on
Deep in the dream chamber
And then I'm awake and I'm guarding my face
Hoping you don't break my stereo
Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without
And so I think about that and then I sorta black out

Held under these smothering waves 
By your strong and thick veined hand
But one of these days I'm going to wriggle up on dry land

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

"So this is a song, it's one of those songs where when I start to tell the stories about the -- this time in my life, which is my adolescence, stuff strikes me as funny and it doesn't seem to strike other people as funny except for other people who got themselves slapped around a little in their houses and stuff. And then they will laugh and then somebody next to them will give them a dirty look. And I will be like, no, no, he knows it's funny because you lived, right, so everything is funny if you manage to live to laugh about it later, right. And so this song is about, uh -- not knowing for sure that that's how it's going to turn out, but hoping nervously that it will." -- 2010-09-08 - Brudenell Social Club - Leeds, England
"This is a true story about how you learn what things you want to protect from a catastrophe that happens every four or five days." -- 2012-05-06 - The Metro - Sydney, Australia

Things Referenced in this Song[]

"The superclass Tetrapoda (Ancient Greek τετραπόδηs tetrapodēs, "four-footed"), or the tetrapods /ˈtɛtrəpɒd/, comprises the first four-limbed vertebrates and their descendants, including the living and extinct amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds.... The change from a body plan for breathing and navigating in water to a body plan enabling the animal to move on land is one of the most profound evolutionary changes known." -- Wikipedia article, "Tetrapod"
The title of the song "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" is a reference to Job 1:8, "And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?" (KJB).
The title of the song is an oblique way of saying “have you thought about what we’d do with the dog?” The phrase itself suggests being a response to the question, “why don’t you leave him?” and is a way of subtly implying domestic abuse.
The phrase "rising above one's station" refers to someone reaching a higher social position than they were born into, with the implication that it is undeserved.