The Lyrics:

[No lyrics, although some people believe he whispers "the best thing about life is...knowing you put it together"]

(Pre 5-12-98)
The beginning of this song starts out with the whispering hums of human women's voices. It progresses into a guitar, only slightly playing, ever so quietly. I think the women's voices drifting away in the wind signifies Trent's need and want to be alone with himself and only himself. As the music progresses, even the guitar goes away, and we are left with the synthesized drowning piano and organ. I think this shows that even when you only want certain parts away from you, everything seems to leave, except the essential part that makes you, you. This really seems to fit, seeing as in TDS, it is apperant that Trent or the main character of the album dies in Big Man With a Gun. So I think A Warm Place is showing that even when you die, you're left with one essential part of you, this piece of you being your soul.

-Lazarus

(Pre 5-12-98)
A warm place is about hope. Although there are no lyrics to put on the screen, not very much to interpret, a warm place is about that place you go when you have just broken down. It's like when you have a nervous breakdown, or just a depression attack, you go to your warm place and it just feels better. For some people the warm place is drugs, for some its a favorite hobby, its different for everyone. My warm place, i'm sorry to say it, would have to be fire. When I get so down and out, I'll light a candle, and I'll sit there for a long time. I'll stare at it. I'll touch it. I'll hold my fingers on there until the flesh burns. But while I'm in that warm place, it makes me feel better. Then when I come out of my warm place, everything is even worse because time has set in. And everything hurts more than it did when I was there.

Also the placement of the song makes it significant. Trent put A Warm Place just after crushingly painful songs, Ruiner, the Becoming, i Do not want this, and then the finale, big man with a gun. He's going down. He's just falling apart at the seems. Nothing is as he believes it to be. Trent is trying to find hope. Right after the mass confusion of Big Man With a Gun he shuts himself down. He turns himself off and goes to his warm place. For a moment everything is peaceful, serene. Its all ok. And then he exits his warm place. He's back where he started, only worse. He goes into his heavy suicide binge, eraser. Then he looks at what he has left and sees his reptile, his relationships, and he sees that theres nothing to hold onto there. Finally he moves to the downward spiral. But that track is misplaced on the album so that Hurt, a more commercial song, may take the last place. I believe hurt came first, where he says, "i have nothing left, but if i could start again in someone elses skin, with someone elses life, maybe i could make it" but when he sees he can't. Then finally the downward when he realizes that he has his own life, he finally ends it. . And he looks back to his warm place, and he says, you were that last tiny bit of hope. That last little bit of mushroom blue.

-Fox

(Pre 5-12-98)
This song to me is about the death and rebirth of pain and its followers. The song contains words but they are too soft to hear (listen carefully between the start sound). The death at the end of Man with a Big Gun is sudden and quick. As Trent (THE GOD) dies he lives in this temporary life which quiet and calm. Its length is short as the life turns to rebirth, Back in the Pain.
To me, the song is my favourite and each time I hear the song, I feel despair as if someone close has died. This may be irrelevant but I believe the song is about grief, from the victim and the mourners point of views. As the new life emerges, the old life is "erased" leading to the song "Eraser". With this lead up it enables Trent Reznor to continue the album and show the ending of the soul with Hurt.
All I listen to is Trent and I love his music, This is a song which shows the weaker and more vulnerable side to humanity.

-STRESSBALL

(Pre 5-12-98)
A warm place's placement on the albums is sort of the calm after the storm. After the incredibly angry Ruiner, Becoming, and I do not Want This, the maelstrom is climaxed in Big Man. Although Trent may have afterthoughts about the necessity of the song, I'm glad it's on the album.
Warm Place is that quiet, little happy frame of mind you get into. Maybe not happy, but some semblence of inner peace and serenity. A moment in an otherwise chaotic life that is soothing, peaceful.

-Goth as Fuck

(Pre 5-12-98)
I want to start out by saying that A Warm Place is a beautiful song, probably one of my favorites by Nine Inch Nails. But it's also a very sad song. What I see when I hear A Warm Place is the creation and unltimate destruction of the world. It starts out by having the world be created. It's a good place. A warm place. People face it with hope and wonder. Soon, though, the people on it begin to change. They stop living happily. They don't believe in anything anymore. The Garden of Eden that the world once was is almost a joke. So they go on living in the ruins of this once beautiful place, making it loveless and cold. This lack of warmth (warmth being love, hope, etc.) eventually leads the world (no longer The Warm Place it was) to its end.

-Sinner

(Pre 5-12-98)
A Warm place is a place of hope for trent. Where he can sort his life out or just get away from it all. The song gives an uncanny sense of security, different from the rest of the songs on the downward spiral. Almost like a meditation, between the rest of the songs on the downward spiral. I feel it shows that in the pains of life, there are places of security. Security is the only thing that keeps him alive. keeps him warm. Forgetting the troubles of the outside world.

-Merlin

(Pre 5-12-98)
I believe this song is not depressing, I believe it reaches into your thoughts and brings out a feeling related to the music. I reckon Trent's ace, but what would be the point of an oxymoron such as "A WARM PLACE"? I believe it is a place of quiet, and peace. But not sadness, this song cheers me up, clears my mind of horid thoughts and bad or negative feelings!

-Muddy MudRock

(Pre 5-12-98)
A Warm Place is one of Trent's most powerful songs. I can listen to it when I'm sad, depressed, happy, joyous, etc. It signifies that place inside of us that, as my friend Dan said "is where we go when we need to be alone. It can't be seen, but everyone has it, and should go there." It's a place of healing and deep thought, the realm where our dreams and reality meet. In our warm place, impossibilities become our existence. Or I could be full of shit.

-Grinn the Evil Jester

(Pre 5-12-98)
This is my favorite song on the Downward Spiral album. It shows a shade of lite to such a dark album basically showing you that somehow there is hope for certain people. The song, to me mostly, is that it is an escape to somewhere where you don't fell anything bad, bud good, and for the 3 minutes of music, all of the problems you have just all burn in hell where they belong as you are being drifted to heaven. I just hope Mr. Reznor make a longer and morew beautiful version of his song because to me, it is his finest and his greatest masterpiece.
I would love to hear replys, so if you may, please write to me, anyone, who thinks of what I said about such a marvelous song. Yes, my e-address is listed. Thanx.

-Jestrye

(Pre 5-12-98)
I feel that it is a song of exploration. It lets you explore the feeling of the music without lyrics that sometimes lead you to believe something else. It give you time to think about what the music itself means to you. I think Trent just wanted to explore the possiblilties of just the music itself. Not many songs today have just music. I think that also inspired Trent. I think it is a beautifully arranged piece and was a result of Trent trying to make you get a feel of what impact the music makes on you.

-Kitty

(Pre 5-12-98)
Well, the music seems to suggest a calm and place that is warm, soft, and fuzzy (as suggested by the title). This is how love is said to be felt. The fact that no words are spoken suggests the powerful overcoming feeling of love, that strikes one speachless or perhaps it simply means that in true love no words need to be spoken just a neutral understanding of each other.

-Ankh

(5-26-98)
The song "A Warm Place" is death. It is death at its best, when the soul finishes its hiatus on earth and makes the transition to the other side.
The music symbolizes death as peaceful, but sad as well. The sad aspect focuses on an individual, his feelings, soul, character, experiences, joy, pain when he/she was alive. The song makes all forms of violence, pain, go away for the 3 and a half minutes of the song. The song is for the person, individual, to rest and be peaceful without any harm or pain being inflicted on.
The song hints at hope, even, which is relevant when the character transforms to the other side after his/her death.
The whole instrumental is placed right before another brief instumental, "Eraser", where the other side, (after death) can be imagined with the music.

-FRAGILE

(5-26-98)
I think this song is meant to be exactly as the title suggests-a warm place. The entire record has a vicious, raw chaos to it, heavy and dense. But this song is a brief stray from all that. It suggests a warm, foggy, vague place where trent travels (mentally) to think, to reflect. The lightening off of the closing notes seems to represent a sort of hope, beyond the all of that violent, tormented chaos that soon follows.

-erypmav

(7-20-98)
Close your eyes and immagine if you will: The spirit of an old man, wandering in the world in between heaven and hell, on earth yet not in the flesh. He happens upon a 7 yr old girl. He remembers the simple joys of life, reminesses his life experiences, sadly. Suddenly the focus is on the girl- the music of carefree happiness, then the man- deep sadness. The ending has both moods, life is filled with both happy times and shitty times, youth and age.

-vamp