In Rainbows/Hail to the Thief

What did I do this afternoon whilst I recuperated from a gradually worsening home-made wine bbq hangover? Yes. I had a merrily self indulgent hour of waily Radiohead. I tend to call R'head albums released after Amnesiac 'waily' because somehow they seem to get progressively more so with each album. If that's possible. Congrats for them. It's a talent if I ever saw one.
You know how sometimes you can watch a film over and over, and if it's a real gem it'll never get old. In fact each time you watch it you'll see things that you hadn't done previously. Yeah, that's a good film.
Well I got this from listening to In Rainbows. The audio version I mean. I heard new things. I was left with a completely different impression of some of the songs that I thought I already knew well. I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by 'Weird Fishes' upon downloading it back in 2008. This time I felt really connected to it like I could identify with it completely. It proves how your personal experiences really shape how we perceive lyrics, sounds, poetry and visual art. I guess back then I hadn't undergone the necessary mind-shaping life graft to get the song.
No wonder we are all so prone to misunderstanding one another. I mean, it's really hard to imagine something if you aren't able to contextualise it with your own ideas. It must be the reason that natural splits emerge between different people. Progressive metal-heads like hanging with other progressive metal-heads. It's not that they don't like the other people. It's just that it's a pain in the arse having to explain to the new people what progressive metal is. At least the hard timer metal heads already have some appreciation for it, so it makes it easier all round.
But what if you met an alien who didn't know what love was? How would we describe to the alien the idea of love? Would we talk about the act of love? Kissing hugging and groping and al? Or would we take the more scientific approach and explain in terms of the pairing off of particular beings with particular genes that fit together? It makes me think that some ideas really are too big and mighty to be designated just one word.