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"
McCarren Park when your body gave ground
1 o'clock, June 6, sun out
God hid in amphetamine waves
Margaritas & disposable days
We folded arms & I felt your heart hum
Speedy eyes & I want what I want
The truth, cut with adrenalized fear
Cashed baggies in our ashtray beers
I know you know
I wanna love you but I can't let go
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
McCarren Park when the culture crashed down
Copy after copy til the color washed out
I bet the future on an ice cream cone
I kept it secret til I took you home
The day split to two sides
You flipped a quarter, said "I can't decide
Honey, it never stops."
The leaves laughed, the bed burned
I know I want you, but I'm waiting my turn
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
McCarren Park when the beauty bled out
20 years in my cottonball mouth
You held my hand, said, "Don't let me drift."
I said, "I'd never even think of it."
And I knew, right there
I could have you but I'd have to share
Honey, it never stops
So we slept, the sun left
I dreamt nothingness in shades of red
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
1 o'clock, June 6, sun out
God hid in amphetamine waves
Margaritas & disposable days
We folded arms & I felt your heart hum
Speedy eyes & I want what I want
The truth, cut with adrenalized fear
Cashed baggies in our ashtray beers
I know you know
I wanna love you but I can't let go
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
McCarren Park when the culture crashed down
Copy after copy til the color washed out
I bet the future on an ice cream cone
I kept it secret til I took you home
The day split to two sides
You flipped a quarter, said "I can't decide
Honey, it never stops."
The leaves laughed, the bed burned
I know I want you, but I'm waiting my turn
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
McCarren Park when the beauty bled out
20 years in my cottonball mouth
You held my hand, said, "Don't let me drift."
I said, "I'd never even think of it."
And I knew, right there
I could have you but I'd have to share
Honey, it never stops
So we slept, the sun left
I dreamt nothingness in shades of red
Honey, it never stops
No, it never stops
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“It’s loosely based on a two-day sort of run where someone I’m close with and I were just basically playing weekend in the middle of the week and just kinda being messy in that part of Brooklyn where the park is. We ended up in the park at, like, one in the afternoon, after being awake for like 36 hours, drinking frozen margaritas out of styrofoam cups, and I remember thinking, like, this is really good, this is really good, til I thought, this is really bad, which is often how those things kinda went.” -Andy Hull
This a quote from this interview with Kevin Devine of Bad Books: huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/chatting-with-pils-john-l_b_2004088.html
" The song, lyrically, has a passing reference to the change that I've seen in McCarren Park over the last 15 to 20 years, to where it seems now like there are a lot of great coffee shops, great record stores and great looking people walking around, but it feels like it's a copy of a copy of a copy, "copy after copy, til the color washed out." That's just my little way of throwing an observation in there. McCarren Park is the central place in the song where I actually ended up spending a lost weekend in the middle of the week once with a close friend of mine. We were kind of boozing and whatever else, and we ended up spending sort of a Monday that bled into a Tuesday in and around that neighborhood, and the song is a lot about the kinds of feelings that come with that sort of chemically aided feeling -- you feel open, sort of like you're riding that wave, and then that wave crashes, which is maybe also a metaphor for the culture. That song is kind of about both of those things, but really is predominantly a personal story with some liberties taken about the blurred line between friendship and love, and the blurred line between sober realizations and less sober idealizations that happen in your head. It's a song that's kind of about the opportunity to see things in retrospect that in the moment felt so different. It's kind of in a weird way a lost love song too."