Jumpers

I believe this song is a story about someone who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden gate bridge, "The golden spine of engineering". The person killing them self is most likely a student because of the line “I will not go to school again”. The student was bored with their trivial life, “I sit in traffic jams for hours don’t push me, I am not OK” and wishes their life had more meaning. When she sings "I’m not a bird, I’m not a plane" she's saying, (1) She can't fly ;) and (2) She is no super hero, meaning she is human and is flawed like the rest of us. Two other lines in the song that lead me to believe that the character is committing suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge are “my falling shape will draw a line between the blue of sea and sky” and “four seconds was the longest wait”. To me, “my falling shape will draw a line between the blue of sea and sky” is an obvious reference to someone jumping off a bridge seeing as how there is water under a bridge and the form of the body would in fact create a line between the sea and sky, unless, they did a belly flop. “Four seconds was the longest wait” would probably be a rough estimate of the time from when the person jumped off the bridge until they made contact with the water. Since this would lead to death, it would most likely seem like “the longest wait.” Whether or not this song is metaphor for something, I don’t know, could be.

The song is about suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. Based on an article in The New Yorker, iirc.

Pretty sure bugoff is kidding. This song is definitely about... well, what everyone else said--a girl jumping and killing herself. Brilliant song, everything from the awesome guitar licks to the awesome Corin/Carrie harmonizing, to the best drummer ever, to the insane lyrics. I only wish I didn't get into them so late... I hope they get back together. One of my favorite bands.

I love this song and Sleater-Kinney. I'm seeing them in February. Yay.

As for the song, to me it has a lot of 'time' references and metaphors to describe it.

I have to agree with you on that. It certainly does have lots of references towards "time". This is a living metaphor then again all of Sleater-Kinney's songs are metaphors in general. The song has an awesome guitar. Simplistic yet unique. Completely reflects the nature of the song. Escape from a sad life.

my bad guitar track. Bad grammar.

-Lotus

Wow, my last post in Xtra long.

makes sense, i didn't see it like that

wow.

i never thought about it like that before. thank you.

but seeing as how in the video clip for this song. the girl commits suicide.. it would be logical..can't see how i diddn't pick it up earlier.

Hence the title 'Jumpers', i guess.