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"
I'm blessed with a heart that doesn't stop
My minds a weathervane it spins around just like a top
Knows what the winds of fortune bring
In the season of the witch
Home is a perjury, a parlor trick, an urban myth
Oh how the circumstances change
This world of smoke and steel
Of compromise and meter-maids
I'm going to leave here before too long
Zigzagging toward the light
I'm off to sing my bounder's song
True love it hides like city stars
Nothing to gaze upon or contemplate
How near or far
If it comes, it comes quite unannounced
A momentary glance
Lit up by sun or moon
Or bonfire or ambulance
How the circumstances change
Feels unmistakable with no idea from where it came
But you will know it when it's gone
Zigzagging through the night
Half-dead you sing your bounder's song
Half-dead you sing, half-dead you sing
Sing for the bounder whose word is never kept
A bindle of flowers to state his mind
And bloom when he forgets
It's true that shadows tell the time
On sunny afternoons, on crowded sidewalks, passersby
I'm in a queue that stretches out
Far as the eye can see
It forms a figure eight and goes on for eternity
Oh how the circumstances change
I fly by interstate across a purple mountain range
I find a place to come undone
Zigzagging toward you now
I sing out loud my bounder's song
My minds a weathervane it spins around just like a top
Knows what the winds of fortune bring
In the season of the witch
Home is a perjury, a parlor trick, an urban myth
Oh how the circumstances change
This world of smoke and steel
Of compromise and meter-maids
I'm going to leave here before too long
Zigzagging toward the light
I'm off to sing my bounder's song
True love it hides like city stars
Nothing to gaze upon or contemplate
How near or far
If it comes, it comes quite unannounced
A momentary glance
Lit up by sun or moon
Or bonfire or ambulance
How the circumstances change
Feels unmistakable with no idea from where it came
But you will know it when it's gone
Zigzagging through the night
Half-dead you sing your bounder's song
Half-dead you sing, half-dead you sing
Sing for the bounder whose word is never kept
A bindle of flowers to state his mind
And bloom when he forgets
It's true that shadows tell the time
On sunny afternoons, on crowded sidewalks, passersby
I'm in a queue that stretches out
Far as the eye can see
It forms a figure eight and goes on for eternity
Oh how the circumstances change
I fly by interstate across a purple mountain range
I find a place to come undone
Zigzagging toward you now
I sing out loud my bounder's song
Lyrics submitted by splitintwo, edited by Browns0286, a12567, Mauskateer
Zigzagging Toward the Light Lyrics as written by Conor M. Oberst
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I thought the line was "I'm in a queue that stretches out..."
Additionally, is "bounder" the right word? I kept hearing "boundless" throughout, but mostly because I'd never heard of the word bounder, which I guess is an informal term for a "man of objectionable social behavior; a cad."
its definitely bounder and the bridge is wrong too but im not going to go back and change it again.