| Adam Stephens – The Cities That You've Burned Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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My guess for the 5th verse is "While your stand before a sin; your royal bloom" This song in my opinion is such a great song with all the characteristics we've come to know from his lyrics with the two gallants. He sticks to his strengths especially in his comprehension of human emotion and dynamics. He's giving into the emotion of falling in love despite understanding that it is not a means to an end unlike most songs that tend to promise or conjure up an idea of a happy ending. Where I love this song though is his tone of an almost detached party. To me, it sounds like he is explaining to an ignorant and guilty party but instead of an angry or vengeful intonation like you'd expect in this situation, he has a somewhat reserved understanding. This is interesting because this would hint that he is a witness with divine understanding however, his showing such pity for human suffering and use of 2nd person is contradictory showing very human characteristics. I think we've all been there or will be there where you let someone break your heart (often along with other guys and/or girls leaving "cities that you've burned to the ground") who doesn't understand the destruction that they're causing. And this is where this song especially shines.... in that situation, after first impulses of wanting to reflect the pain you felt upon your attacker, you might not even blame them in the end. You come to an understanding that this is an age old conflict as a part of the human experience as falling in love. It's in that you neither dismiss the experience as trivial nor dwell upon it as if the gods themselves are singling you out for unique despair like the way you feel when it first happens. He also did a beautifully poetic and very accurate description of the women who burn our cities down.. At least in my experience, it's her beauty that draws you in, perhaps also her holding a royalty-esque image in your mind for whatever reasons, you unknowingly hold some ideals that she has knowledge of something you don't have but desperately want/need. When this inevitably proves to be false, and the most intimate exposure you have sacrificed or invested emotionally (in the hopes of some fairy-tale epiphany you thought she could bring to light), that which is the most anybody has to offer is gone and treated as common as it truly is contradicting everything we are taught of being special and the hero in the movie of our life. The cities burn because it is challenging the foundation we have built our entire belief system and understanding of the world upon. While our cities are burning, to our upmost frustration find that that the arsonist (whom we have been taught should be punished for their actions) is not only not pitying you but is ignorant to the ashes and sin that sit at her feet. However, with the passing of time, holding such a pessimistic idea of the world becomes tiring and disheartening preventing you from enjoying the few delivered promises in life. So what Adam demonstrates, with imagery more descriptive than words outside of metaphors could possibly accomplish, in this song is taking a classic romanticism point of view. He does so by remembering the pain and absurdity of the event, taking action by informing her of what happened and warns not to do the same to more "switch like a switchblade my love, cut the young man down" but most definitively of romanticism is in his chorus "And in the ashes of the cities that you've burned We'll sit and wait for your return" meaning that despite knowing that what he had strived for will never be fulfilled to the extent he once thought possible, he fell so hard in love with the concept itself (and the fact that belief in something non-existent is better than not believing because in believing you enable yourself open during the process and life in general) that he shamelessly decides to allow himself, along with others finding themselves victims of similar circumstances, to hope for the impossible when he says that "we'll sit and wait for your return" |
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