32) Not Crying - Part 3

There's just a little bit of dust in my eye
That's from the path that you made when you said your goodbye
I'm not weeping 'cause you won't be here to hold my hand
For your information, there's an inflammation in my tear gland
I'm not upset because you left me this way
My eyes are just a little sweaty today
They've been looking around and are searching for you
They've been looking for you even though I told them not to


Hello and welcome to another episode of Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake, and today we getting into the real meat of the song "Not Crying" by Flight of the Conchords. I hope you're enjoying it so far! If this is your first time joining us, welcome! We have an episode titled "Introduction" that I *highly* recommend listening to before continuing the podcast. If you haven't listened to the other two episodes of this series, I would also recommend giving them a listen before continuing today's episode. That being said, let's get started!

This next part of the song gives us a series of denials, each one it's own little joke. Let's dive into the first one.

"There's just a little bit of dust in my eye, that's from the path that you made when you said your goodbye."

Alright, what exactly is he saying here?

Well of course, he's insisting that he's not crying, and he's making some sort of excuse. This time, he's saying that he's not crying, he just has some dust in his eye. What is dust? Well, dust is that light, powdery substance that you find on the ground. In fact, it's a lot like...dirt. So what exactly is the difference between dust and dirt? To start with, dust is a form of dirt. That is to say, there are lots of different kinds of dirt, and one of those, is dust. The most common usage of the word "dirt" is when we're talking about that brown stuff on the ground, also known as "soil". You have probably heard the word "dirty" to describe something that's not clean. This is related. At it's base level, being "dirty" means having dirt on you, again, generally something like soil from the ground. But it could also be dust, or anything really. A child whose face is covered in chocolate after they've eaten some cake is "dirty", even if in this case, the thing making them dirty isn't dirt. Dirty is just the opposite of clean, and is not restricted to the actual substance "dirt".

When we talk about dust, we are talking about the lightest form of dirt. This is usually somewhat powdery. Something that could be floating in the air or is blown around by the wind. You can't plant crops in dust. It's just useless powder.

If there is a lot of dust in the air, it's very easy for bits of dust to get into your eye. This can very easily produce tears as your eyes try to get rid of the invading dust!

This is what our singer is referring to. He simply has some dust in his eye, no big deal.

While this could genuinely be a good excuse for tears, his next line gives away that this is another lie.

He says "That's from the path that you made when you said your goodbye."

This sentence is a bit more difficult to unpack, but we'll give it a shot. What does he mean "That's from the path that you made"?

Well, the idea we're supposed to think of, is that she said goodbye to him, after she told him that they were breaking up, and then she walked away. But she walked away very quickly. So quickly in fact, that her feet "kicked up" dust. You can imagine a cartoon character speeding off in one direction, leaving behind a big dust cloud.

So he's saying that she ran away so quickly from him that she kicked up dust that landed in his eye and made him cry.

This is funny on at least two levels. The first is of course that he's trying to say that he's not crying, but once again he can't help but mention her leaving him. Obviously he is really crying.

The second is the idea that she disliked him so much, that she practically ran away from him as fast as she could run! This is more of an insult towards him than towards her, as it makes him seem...well...unlikeable.

Our next line says "I'm not weeping 'cause you won't be here to hold my hand, for your information, there's an inflammation in my tear gland". There's some fun rhymes there.

This one is pretty straightforward, but we'll talk about a few things here.

To start out with, we see our first synonym for "crying" in this song. "To weep" means to cry, but to cry very forcefully. This is no small cry. It is a steady, constant cry because you are deeply sad about something. If someone is weeping, they are grieving or mourning something. If a close friend dies, you might weep at their funeral. It's a level past just simply crying because something didn't go your way.

Can you think of any other synonyms for crying?

The next thing I want to mention is the phrase "inflammation in my tear gland". What is inflammation? This is when something, generally something on your body, is irritated, swollen, and painful. This usually is caused by some kind of sickness or infection. Often it can be caused by something irritating an area on your body.  The tear gland is the part of the body that produces tears, so what our singer is saying is that something has caused his tear gland to become inflamed, which in turn is causing tears to flow out of it.

The final thing I want to mention is the phrase "For your information". This is a great phrase! What it means is that you are informing something about something, that is to say, you are telling them about something they don't already know. But be careful with this one! It's often used in a mean way, since you are assuming that the other person does not know something. Usually, it's said in order to correct someone about something that they are mistaken about. In general, it's not a super nice thing to say. In the case of our song, he's using it defensively. She has accused him of crying, and he is saying "No, I'm not crying, for your information I am having a medical issue!" He's trying to make her feel bad for saying that he's crying.


To finish out, we'll look at the next four lines, since they are all connected.

I'm not upset because you left me this way
My eyes are just a little sweaty today
They've been looking around and are searching for you
They've been looking for you even though I told them not to

The first line is simple enough, he's saying that he's not mad that she broke up with him the way that she broke up with him. That is to say, the fashion in which she broke up with him is not something he's upset about. Now of course, as usual, we can assume our singer is not telling the truth. Let's look to the next line for more confirmation.

"My eyes are just a little sweaty today"

What does it mean that something is sweaty? Well, if you've ever exercised, and I hope that all of you have excersized, you've no doubt become sweaty. This is when your body produces a liquid that comes out of your pores, the tiny holes in your skin. This serves to cool your body down when it's getting hot. This liquid is called sweat, and when you are covered in sweat, you are "sweaty".

Skin is what produces sweat, so the joke here is that eyes do not produce sweat, and this is a ridiculous lie! It's also a funny idea, the idea of an eye sweating, because of course, they can't. They can cry though.

And why does he say they are sweating? Well, it's because they have been getting a lot of exercise! He says "They've been looking around and are searching for you, they've been looking for you even though I told them not to."

So the idea here is that he has been so desperately looking for her, because he IS sad, that his eyes are getting a ton of exercise and they are sweating. Wow. Also, he is claiming that he told his eyes to not look for her, but they did it anyway, against his will. This is of course silly, because naturally he controls his own eyes.

That's all we have for today! I hope you've been enjoying this song, even though it's a little bit different than usual. And I hope you'll join us next time as we finish it up! I'll talk to you then!


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