| David Ackles – One Night Stand Lyrics | 3 months ago |
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Filing this under 'Memory' thought there's nothing specific to link it to. It's more a reflection on just how utterly I can identify with Ackles here. There's something incredibly poignant and bittersweet and beautiful about spending only a fleeting moment with someone. For just one night you pretend that things could be magical and different. Then the sun comes up, and the dream is over. So you get dressed and make breakfast with this stranger you'll never see again, savoring the last fading memories as you make small-talk and try to act casual. It's not sad, exactly. You know you'll never feel it again, so you try to memorize it. To imagine it growing and lasting forever. Then he reminds you of the time. It's a travesty that there are no comments here, so maybe posting something will help draw eyes. This is a brilliant little song about transient love and the sweetness of a moment in the woods. |
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| Florence + the Machine – King Lyrics | 3 months ago |
| 2:42 - If your heart doesn't expand in your chest in the face of a note at once defiant and vulnerable; powerful and plaintive; then you're missing one of life's greatest joys. | |
| Indigo Girls – Ghost Lyrics | 4 months ago |
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I'm crying tonight because of this song. Almost twenty years ago, on a random afternoon, I got a call from my best friend's father. I can't remember what he said, but I knew what it meant. Jack was dead. Not expected-if-tragic following a long illness. Not in something as immediately visceral and utterly prosaic as a car crash. He drowned. I loved him. As a young twenty-something, I'd been in love with him for almost a decade. A hopeless gay boy yearning for his straight best friend as they play video games and have sleepovers and spend every day together. And he drowned. Almost twenty years ago. Every now and then this song comes through my rotation; if I don't skip it, I'm bawling. I didn't skip it tonight. I am still in love with him. With his ghost. "And the bitter pill I swallow / Is the silence that I keep / It poisons me, I can't swim free / The river is too deep" |
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| Jars of Clay – Silence Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I feel strange even commenting on this song, coming as I do from an atheist/humanist perspective. Then again, I've always been fond of songs and music that deal with matters of faith and personal evaluation, so perhaps that's enough. I liked this song long before I knew who Jars of Clay were or what their position was. I was beginning to realize my own lack of faith and was starting to feel 'separation anxiety' at the thought of dealing with the world as an adult and a rational human being, rather than as a child to my cosmic sky-daddy. To me, this song is about moving beyond faith and looking back sadly at what you're leaving behind. It means growing up, and accepting that while we all want there to be someone always looking out for us, in reality, we've only got ourselves and other people to rely on. It's sort of like realizing that Santa Claus isn't real: we still have a fondness for the old feelings, but we no longer base our lives upon fairy tales. Instead of interpreting this song with the 'God is in the silence' concept, I instead take the final lines literally. 'Where are you? Where are you?' If there is a divine being, surely it could manifest itself in some way that even a rationalist would be forced to objectively accept its existence? Since, despite being beseeched by the singer, who is obviously torn by his own declining faith and growing understanding of reality, God chooses to say nothing, it can only mean that He doesn't exist. All that being said, it's still a powerful song, and it goes to show that good music can be interpreted in many different ways by different people. :) |
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| Toad the Wet Sprocket – Walk On The Ocean Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I've always considered this song to be a brief retelling of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Consider: "We spotted the ocean at the head of the trail; Where are we going, so far away." Frodo and company start in the Shire, where, purportedly, one can see the Sea from the top of one of the Elf Towers in the Westmarch, and are heading for Rivendell, which none of them have been to and which is far away. "And somebody told me that this is the place Where everything's better and everything's safe." These lines are of course a reference to Rivendell itself, the last Homely House, where the Elves live and all is good and at peace. "And half and hour later we packed up our things We said we'd send letters and all those little things." The company sets off again, after what seems just a very short while, and Frodo tells Bilbo that he'll keep a journal, if he can't send messages. "And they knew we were lying but they smiled just the same It seemed they'd already forgotten we'd came." Again, neither Bilbo nor the elves think that the company will be in touch. In the case of the Elves, they slip back into their timeless eternity and seem to have already moved onto weightier matters as the company sets out. "Now back at the homestead where the air makes you choke, If people don't know you, then trust is a joke." Fast-forward to the scouring of the Shire, and you have Frodo and company returning home, only to find it devastated at the hands of Saruman. And of course, the Shire itself is unwelcoming of strangers and mistrust anyone they don't know or aren't familiar with. "We don't even have pictures, just memories to hold That grow sweeter each season as we slowly grow old." None of the companions have any pictures of their journey, but subsist on remembering all that they've seen and thought about. I always picture Frodo touching the jewel that Arwen gave him and contemplating his final journey to the Grey Havens. The last line can either be about Frodo leaving, or about Sam spending the rest of his life in Middle-Earth holding on to memories. I don't know, that's just always been my interpretation. As for the refrain, walking on the ocean can be seen as a metaphor for the ships that will sail, and the timeless yet ever-changing nature of Middle-Earth itself (flesh to water, wood to bone, etc.) I don't think I'm that far out there - after all, Toad does have a song called Hobbit on the Rocks. :) |
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