Flying, Floyd, and Foliage

I remember being in a literature class in school and we were discussing symbolism of one of the various classics we were reading. I glazed over (as I often did in high school) when teachers would go into long lectures about how "this" actually meant "that" and "this" is what the author actually meant when they wrote "that". I never remember any of my English teachers ever backing up any of those interpretations with any sort of facts like "the author revealed this in a later work" or anything to that degree. Many a time, during those discussions, I thought to myself, "Who the hell are these people to speculate what the hell the author was thinking when they wrote it? Maybe they meant exactly what they wrote."

How the hell did I arrive at this juncture today you ask? Well I was watching this video of the plane I want to build (see link on right) on youtube earlier this evening and hearing Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly" in my head while I watched it. I remembered that many people think the song is about drugs when it's actually about flying an airplane. Floyd has been associated with drugs for so long that everyone thinks every song they ever wrote was about pot.

My point? Most of the time a tree is just a damn tree.