Before we proceed, however, we must consider meaning and how it is determined. Thus, the more pertinent question is whether our minds are capable of perceiving meaning unless it results from binary opposition to something else. Things may have meaning in and of themselves, but the only way we can conceive of meaning, even a hypothetical objective meaning, is in terms of what things mean to us. Anything that appears to have meaning in and of itself is merely displaying its links with the rest of the universe. The concept 'one' has meaning only because we know that it is surrounded on both sides by an infinite range of other numbers that are not 'one'.
Words have definitions that exclude all the others in the dictionary.
A rose held in the teeth means something entirely different from a rose on a coffin or a rose in a bouquet. And a knocking at the gate after a murder is not a knocking at the gate when Avon calls. From the start, we are assaulted by strong guitar and drums, with a sibilant snare reinforcing the percussive rhythm that carries through the entire piece. Guitar snakes right along with his voice as he makes his case, and then it explodes in great angular swaths as he screams that he lives in a world of his own with his own issues and responsibilities, a world other than that of the people to whom the song seems to be addressed. The initial figure returns, with a few embellishments, and the second verse strengthens the theme of unchanged identity and continuity in the presence of topsy-turvy upheaval, even if directed at or occurring to the counterculture, of which Hendrix was and is generally considered to be not only a member but a guiding light.