Vaporize

This song touched my heart in more ways than one. Like dundle, I wasn't sure what it meant when I first heard it. This band, Broken Bells, tends to make songs in which the lyrics are difficult to understand. But when I looked up the lyrics and read them, I knew right away what it was about.

You see, as we get older, out lives fly by faster. That's a fact. When you're one year old, a year is your whole life. When you turn two, a year is only half your life. So by the time you reach your fifties, a year is merely a fiftieth of your life, meaning that each year seems like less than the last. That's why our childhood seems so much longer than our adulthood. Doing the math, it's safe to say that your middle-ages will actually feel like your twenties (I think).

There's also the fact that whenever we experience moments in our life that are particularly powerful, emotional, special, or sentimental, our brain will later replay that moment in our minds over and over, making it seem longer. As kids, we have many more novel experiences: we first walk, we first talk, we have our first kiss, et cetera. This is kind of depressing, because once we get old, death will only come nearer faster.

So the point is that this song is about breaking away from the routine to do something incredible that will make our lives seem longer. Watching TV, playing video games, and doing the same thing day after day will make things go too fast, and waste away our lives.

Let me break it down:

What amounts to a dream anymore? A crude device; a veil on our eyes

-It seems all we desire for (what a dream amounts to) is iPhones, TV, video games (crude devices), and to have "successful," typical lives with jobs that mean the same thing every day, which distract us from our real dreams (our eyes have been directed towards a different "dream").

A simple plan we'd be different from the rest And never resign to a typical life

-We should plan to be different and do different and new things, and to NOT be typical.

Common fears start to multiply We realize, we're paralyzed

The common fears are fears that the singer wasted his life away, and did nothing important or meaningful; that he was too caught up in the momentum of a typical society (paralyzed), and is finally realizing it.

Where'd it go, all that precious time? Did we even try to stem the tide?

-Obviously, he's wondering how is life went by so quickly, and asking himself if he even tried to make it meaningful.

Why should we waste it on Buying into the same old lies?

-Why should we waste our lives being typical (buying into the lies).

The longer we wait around The faster the years go by

-This is where I realized what the song is about. This directly references what I said about how each year goes by quicker and quicker.

It's not too late To feel a little more alive Make our escape Before we start to vaporize

-The signer knows it's not to late to do something to make him feel alive. It's not too late to escape from the typical life before he dies (vaporizes). Hence the title of the song. Vaporize = die.

Doubtless, we've been through this So if you want to follow me you should know I was lost then and I am lost now And I doubt I'll ever know which way to go

-He's not sure of he's made the right choices in life. He has lead a typical life and he's telling the audience not to do what he did, because it made him lost.

Moral: Go do something with your life before it's too late. Every moment you spend doing something amazing will make you live longer, and every moment you spend cooped up in an office or doing some typical mindless thing, the shorter you will live. Go climb a mountain, face your fears, meet a nice girl (or guy) if you haven't already. Jump off a cliff, flirt with death, whatever you can to live longer and feel alive!

Here's a YouTube video by Vsuace that explains this whole life thing a lot better than I did. I recommend you check out some of his other videos as well:

youtube.com/watch