The Final Push to the Sum Lyrics
New faces...Strange places, Most everything i see, Becomes a blur to me
And i'm wasted because, The fast pace is too much
Here at the final push to the sum
If my old life is done, Then, what have i become? What have i become?
A breeze and blue skies, The trees and you and i
But if my old life is done, i guess that i've moved on
To new faces and strange places, Here at the final push to the sum
If my old life is done, then, What have i become?
I think it's about someone who changed this lifestyle and just travels around.
'Here at the final push to the sum' is ambiguous, but I'll give it a go. 'Sum' in this context is more likely to mean 'final answer' or 'total' than its purely mathematical meaning. 'Here' suggests that where he is now, either physically or mentally, is somewhere focused on achieving a goal. The 'final push' indicates that this goal is or has been nearly in reach, and yet the narrator doesn't seem to have reached it. The following 'what have I become' indicates that in his rush to move on, to complete whatever goal he has set, he has lost himself in the process.
I keep coming back to this song because that 'sum' can be left up to the listener to project their own meaning onto. At one time, it was completing teacher training, when I felt I had been locked away and stressed and rushed for so long that I had rotted internally, somehow. Another time it was the hurry to re-invent myself after a break-up.
Either way, anyone who has rushed to find a completion, an answer, an ending - whatever - and stopped to find themselves adrift can probably relate.
I think this song is about growing up. Almost losing his innocence and taking that final step into adulthood(final push to the sum). The repetition of what have I become has so much emotion it signals to me that he is not where he desired to be or planned to be.
Again, another great song about nostalgia by these guys.
Again, another great song about nostalgia by these guys. Nobody evocates past times, people you won't see again and places you won't visit, like Grandaddy.
And all of us can relate to this feeling, in one way or another, since we all had childhood dreams and fantasies that never panned out.
I thought it was about old age, and waiting to die, thinking "what have i become" and the pace of youth just flashes by with impossible speed which he can't grasp. The new faces, strange places being hospices and hospitals and the unfamiliar locations that just meld into a blur as he fades from conciousness, as the music fades "what have i become".
Or it could be about a middle-aged indie-rock star who has spent his entire adult life touring and never going home, ie Jason.
Or it could be about a middle-aged indie-rock star who has spent his entire adult life touring and never going home, ie Jason.
i agree with this interpretations. i honestly don't undestand the line "Here at the final push to the sum" (english isn't my first languaje). but i think is about a guy who left a small and quiet place and starts living in a big city and he starts to get used to that place ("But i smile just the same", "i guess that i've moved on"). but that isn't his world, that he doesn't belong to it. when he starts thinking in the place he left behind he realices he has changed and ins't what he used to be "What have i become?".
a very nostalgic song