This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
When I clung to you there was nothing to hold on tight with,
You left me adrift.
Colorado, what now?
You left me adrift.
Colorado, what now?
Lyrics submitted by north dakota
Colorado Lyrics as written by Edward Droste Christopher Bear
Lyrics © SC PUBLISHING DBA SECRETLY CANADIAN PUB., Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
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I think it's about Colorado.
i don't think this has anything to do with technology.. it feels much more powerful to me than that. i think it's about loving someone who couldn't give back what you wanted or needed, and it was easy for them to let you go since they didn't feel the same, but now the they're gone, you don't know what to do with yourself, even though you know it was a wrong fit. what now that you have no one to depend on, whether that person is a good or bad fit for you? sorry that that was kind of babbling.. haha beautiful song
I absolutely love this song. Proof that a song doesn't need four pages of lyrics to be absolutely captivating and beautiful, or to get a point accross. Purrr..
This song seems to be about removing oneself from society and the constant bombardment of technology, possibly going into the wilderness. However, people have become so reliant on things like computers and TV as necessities for living life that when these things are taken away and they are forced to actually think for themselves and worry about survival, they become lost ("What now?").
It's very fitting that the song says so much with so few words. "Simplify," as Thoreau would say.
i see this as a love song. i think he just broke up with a girl he loved who didn't love him back ("When I clung to you there was nothing to hold on tight with"), and now he's just going someplace else hoping he'll forget the pain if he escapes from the memories, wondering what next. he's lost without her. it's a beautiful song. i get the chills when he repeats "What now? What now?" it's so sad.
interesting he uses the word "with" rather than "to" in "nothing to hold on tight with"... it's like rather than saying there wasn't anything to cling to, he's saying he didn't have the means to hang on.
read that way, "you left me adrift" makes me think of "you" as being the one who's adrift.
---That is a good point. By saying with, he's implying that it might have been his own fault. There may have been something to cling to, but he wasn't able to.
I would like to point out that when he says "what now?" he says "what" once more than necessary, making "what now" turn into "now what". I just think that's interesting. It kinda adds to the confusion and sense of loss.
I also would like to add that this song feels like going chest-deep into freezing water without letting your body adjust to it. Like if that physical feeling were an emotion, this song evokes that emotion. Sorry if that's a bit abstract..
As for the meaning.. I agree with elec_trick and mpiet. (:
This song makes me cry almost every time I listen to it. A testament to its simple beauty.
I just started listening to Grizzly Bear recently and I am slightly alarmed by how much I can relate this song to an event in my own life.
I was in Colorado on a family trip with my brother and father. We were there to go on a five-day river rafting trip along with about ten other people we didn't know. It was the last week of my summer vacation, and I was starting college the day after I got back. I was mostly depressed and lonely throughout high school, and had the belief that this would only be exacerbated in college, and even moreso throughout my entire life. I had a very bleak outlook on my future, to say the least.
On that trip, I met someone who completely changed my life in those few days. We were together a lot, and got along very well. He had no idea that I harbored such strong romantic feelings for him, but he paid me attention that I had never received from someone I felt that way for. He thought I was smart, he laughed at me, he thought I was an interesting person. It felt amazing to get that kind of attention from someone who was so much better than me. Everything about him was perfect. His body, his wit, his kindness, his attractiveness, his intelligence, his sociability. I would have hesitated neither then nor today to say that I was in love with him.
I knew I should make some attempt to keep in touch with him at the end of the trip. I knew that my shyness as a person should not be able to conquer the great fortune I had had in meeting him as a decider in this decision. I had to take action. But when the last day came, I didn't do it. It just didn't make sense. I was someone he liked spending time with on a vacation, but not important enough to keep in touch with. I just knew he was a person who it just didn't make sense to ask this of.
When the trip ended, and everyone had parted ways, my family and I were the last to leave. I just sat in the backseat of our car, knowing that I would never talk to him again, and started crying. After a little while, my dad looked behind him at me, and saw it and asked what was wrong. And after that I just started sobbing. I may have been able to contain it, but I wasn't trying. I didn't care. My body was just still, weak, in defeat. I didn't communicate or acknowledge anything he was saying. I couldn't begin to start to talk to these people who know so little about who I am. My dad stopped the car and went around and opened the back passenger door, which I was leaning against, and I just fell out.
I was rather shocked when I realized how closely this song relates to this story. There's the song title, and the lyrics, and to top it all off, the whole atmosphere of the song that feels like the hopelessness and loss that I felt. Many more emotions from this experience that I can't put into words, I also feel when listening to this song. It all feels so real when he sings "What now what now what now what now."
@fajillion I know it's been 6 years since you've posted this, time flies on these sites and with songs, but: this story affects me, I think, because I've been that person, that cruel and cowardly denier, that fearful man, I've been that person and have caused that pain. Now, it's too late. Sigh. We never understand ourselves and so we destroy everything.
what a fitting closing to a beautiful album this song is