a warm place

[instrumental]
the best thing about life is... knowing you put it together.*

*spoken (very softly) but not written.

i have two opinions about this instrumental: one is that the "warm place" may be hell (this would be a kind of a understatement); the other thought is that the warm place is that the warm place is that one refuge, that one safe haven that we all escape to when things get rough.
-broken

cooling off after the violence of big man with a gun. the anger is gone and he's left with some sort of calm. it's a sad calm to me, rather than a positive one: it's everything the character isn't. even if he's happy for the few minutes this peace lasts, we know that he's going to wake up and find himself right back in the same old meat grinder. it becomes just as, or more, horrible as the rest of the album by sheer contrast. also, the song after this is eraser, which is where he first expresses his death wish. perhaps he is calm because he has found an exit -- the ultimate exit. i'm told that people who are truly serious about killing themselves grow calm when they decide to go through with it, because they've made peace with their decision.
-alexa

My following statement is explaining eraser and a warm place as one.I think that a warm place is about finding just that one thing that is right in your life in contrast to what previous songs are talking about (violence, religion, hate, etc.) It's about expanding on that one thing till it almost eliminates the other elements... but the "bandage" is only temperary... you realize that you can't live just by drowning things out... you need to cope with them. this explains why it is followed by eraser, realizing that your life is "wrong", so you *try* to take it out on someone else (need you, dream you, find you, taste you, fuck you, use you, scar you, break you) but realize that you are still the perpetrator (lose me, hate me, smash me, erase me, kill me)
-ryan

This is one of the most climatic parts of the ever decreasing spiral. for once the existance of it all stops. Time has no life. nothing is moving. this is when it all freezes for Time to look back upon itself, to see what has occured. to see what it has done. everyone and everything looks to see the beginning of the end to it all, for this is before the spiral starts its most steepest curve down. but for that cruicial moment, everything was right, nothing was wrong. all wrong doings forgotten, all sins forgiven. the senses are all filled with joy, love, and pleasure. But soon, the warmth ebbs away and coldness seeps in. everything is rushed back with a fury that send the senses reeling even faster down the spiral.
-darK

I think that this purely instrumental piece is about Trent Reznor's 'warm place'...a place where he feels he belongs and a place where he feels safe showing who he really is.
-Sarah

after initial outburst of emotions in earlier tracks, the author falls asleep, unconscious, or into a coma. memories of all the good times in life, with muted bad ones flow through his head, with a smile on his lips. he is swimming through a blood-warm ocean, and can breath water. his freedom in this state astounds him, and the lack of his omnipresent angel, devil, and conscience lifts a weight off his tired shoulders. only until he awakes to find his devil has killed the angel, and can now speak to him directly, showing him how all the good things turned to shit, telling him of all that is wrong, slowly building it up, to an explosive climax of self-loathing and hate.
-dizz

In my mind, I view a warm place...as exactly that, the warm place in one's mind where happiness and true love exists...but in trent's warm place, there is an undercurrent of great sadness...sadness, perhaps, that he needs to retreat to this place in the face of an increasingly uncaring world. That he is ashamed to admit just exactly how he feels in the world, and can only do it here. Will trent find a warm place in reality where he can be himself and not have to repress his emotions for the sake of those who have control over him? Perhaps I am being too general, as that statement could apply to most nine inch nails songs and instrumentals...but a warm place seems to personify his feeling, his deepest feelings which no words, not his, not anybody's can truly express.
-st