| Bright Eyes – The Calendar Hung Itself . . . Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This is my favorite Bright Eyes song; it always has been. Right down to the title: "The Calendar Hung itself." Conor's word play is brilliant, but subtle. A lot of you try to take his words far to literally. "Well the clock’s heart it hangs inside its open chest with its hands stretched towards the calendar hanging itself. But I will not weep for those dying days." He's referring to the clock and the calendar as living things, not your average objects. The calendar is hanging itself, as in with a noose. Get it? And the clock's hands are reaching out to it as actual hands, like a person, not a clock. It's word play. And since the calendar is killing itself he's talking about how he won't cry for it's death (and the passing of time and whatnot, but I'm not in the mood to get into that symbolism. If you own the cd (as you should) you should already understand what the clocks and calendars represent because of the fake explanatory radio interview thing.), you know, "those dying days." That's why so many of you have problems understanding so many of Conor's lyrics, you try to read them like you would write them instead of how he actually writes them. That's not how they're meant to be taken. He probably didn't kiss "a girl with a broken jaw that her father gave to her," but he may have kissed a girl that was abused by her father. He talks about an abused girl in several of his other songs. Other pieces of that last verse may or may not be literal, I think it's a mix. He combines his perception of things with the reality of things a lot, so there may be a real field of tomatoes somewhere where it was always hot and bright from the sun and was therefore "sun-bruised" because the sun constantly beat down on it, beating it up and bruising it. It's all about how he strings his thoughts together. That's why he's so widely called a poet instead of just a song writer. Off the explanations, how about that amazing second verse? "Here is where you rest!" That's my favorite line, simply because of the urgency in it. I get shivers just thinking about it. |
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