| Ben Howard – End Of The Affair Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Another magnificent masterpiece of Ben Howard that leaves a lasting impression on me. It’s just another Howard song that I just can’t stop listening to. The song in all its aspects is so fragile; the structure, but most of all, the content. The content brims over with complexity. It took me a while before I was getting some insight in what he was telling. This is what I made of it: In my opinion, the story contains 4 principal roles: ‘he’, ‘you’, ‘her’ and ‘I’. The I-person obviously plays a central role. It all revolves around him. With “End of the Affair” as title of the song, you know the story is about the I-person who had an affair with a mistress. I think the hardest part is to figure who plays which role. I believe when the I-person mentions ‘her’, he’s talking about his wife. I believe the events of this song have already took place. The affair has been brought into the open. His wife discovered about his adultery. She left him. (“Living without her”) Furthermore, his wife has moved on now, she’s found someone new in her life (“And now I watch her / Running ‘round in love again”), while he feels like he’s still stuck in his life, like there’s nothing left for him. No love, no life. When the I-person mentions ‘you’, he’s talking about his mistress. The ‘he’ refers to the spouse of his former mistress. I’m talking about ‘former mistress’, because also with her, it’s the end of the affair. Not only did his wife knows about his adultery, but his mistress didn’t choose him over her spouse. So, the I-person is left alone, his wife left him, his mistress left him. He can’t live without them. He still talks nostalgically about his affair and mistress when he’s with the right company (“Now I talk about you / When I’m with our mutual friends), but the fact is that he’s all alone. There’s no one left. For me, that story makes sense in this song. The first sentence is “the end of the after”, but Ben Howard makes it – and I think, on purpose – sound like “the end of the affair” or even “the end of the after”. It’s literally a very ambiguous sentence. But overall, they all tell the same story: it’s over. There’s nothing left anymore. It’s time to move on. The war is over. And there was bloodshed, but it was all his blood. He has lost everything: “This is desert”, a huge emptiness in his life with an endless view. He doesn’t see a way out anymore, he’s almost at wit’s end. (“Living without her / Living at all / Seems to slow me down / Living forever / Hell, I don’t know / Do I care, do I care the thunder’s rumbled sound?”) He’s bagging one of them to come back as a last resource, I think (“And what of him / What the hell, love”). That is when he’s getting angry and frustrated and the music – the sound as well as the rhythm – then changes completely. |
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