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"
One of those fucking, awful black days
When nothing is pleasing and everything that happens
Is an excuse for anger
An outlet for emotions stockpiled, an arsenal, an armor
These are the days when I hate the world
Hate the rich, hate the happy
Hate the complacent, the TV watchers
Beer drinkers, the satisfied ones
Because I know I can be all of those little hateful things
And then I hate myself for realizing that
There's no preventative, directive or safe approach for living
We each know our own fate
We know from our youth, how to be treated
How we'll be received, how we shall end
These things don't change
You can change your clothes
Change your hairstyle, your friends, cities, continents
But sooner or later your own self will always catch up
Always it waits in the wings
Ideas swirl but don't stick
They appear but then run off like the rain on the windshield
One of those rainy day car rides, my head implodes
The atmosphere in this car, a mirror of my skull
Wet, damp, windows dripping and misted with cold
Walls of grey, nothing good on the radio, not a thought in my head
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
Lets take life and slow it down incredibly slow
Frame by frame
With two minutes that take ten years to live out
Yeah, let's do that
Telephone poles like praying mantis against the sky
Metal arms outstretched
So much land traveled, so little sense made of it
It doesn't mean a thing, all this land laid out behind us
I'd like to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while
I'm disgusted with petty concerns
Parking tickets, breakfast specials
Does someone just have to carry this weight?
Abstract typography, methane covenant
Linear gospel, Nashville sales lady, stocky emissary
Torturous lice, mad Elizabeth
Chemotherapy bullshit
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
The light within you shines like a diamond mine
Like an unarmed walrus, like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a skunk, eating it's own tail
Steam turbine, frog farm
Two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun
Hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blow job
Deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories
Movements, the movie, unfeeling, unreeling, about to begin
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
I've seen your hallway, you're a darn call away
I've hear your stairs creak, I can fix my mind on your yes
And your no, I'll film your face today in the sparkling canals
All red, yellow, blue, green brilliance and silver Dutch reflection
Racing thoughts, racing thoughts, all too real
You're moving so fast now, I can't hold your image
This image I have of your face by the window
Me standing beside you, arm on your shoulder
A catalog of images, flashing glimpses then gone again
Untethered to the posters soak in me, every clear afternoon now
I'll think of you, up in the air, twisting your heel
Your knees up around me, my face in your hair
You scream so well, your smile so loud, it still rings in my ears
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
Imitation, distant, tired of longing, clean my teeth
Stay the course, hold the wheel, steer on to freedom
Open all the boxes, open all the boxes
Open all the boxes, open all the boxes
Times Square Midday, newspaper buildings
News headlines going around, you watch as they go
And hope there's some good ones, those tree shadows in the park
They're all whispering, shake some leaves
Around six p.m., shadows across the cobblestones
Girl in front of bathroom mirror, she slow and careful
Paints her face green and mask like
Like my cheese, portrait with green stripe
Long shot through apartment window
A monologue on top but no girl in shot
The light within me shines like a diamond mine
Like an unarmed walrus
Like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a snake eating its own tail
A steam turbine, frog pond
Two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun
Hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blow job
Deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories
Movements, the movie, unreeling, about to begin
Oh, great by me
Yeah? Mine were alright, wasn't my best one but who cares?
That's the spirit
When nothing is pleasing and everything that happens
Is an excuse for anger
An outlet for emotions stockpiled, an arsenal, an armor
These are the days when I hate the world
Hate the rich, hate the happy
Hate the complacent, the TV watchers
Beer drinkers, the satisfied ones
Because I know I can be all of those little hateful things
And then I hate myself for realizing that
There's no preventative, directive or safe approach for living
We each know our own fate
We know from our youth, how to be treated
How we'll be received, how we shall end
These things don't change
You can change your clothes
Change your hairstyle, your friends, cities, continents
But sooner or later your own self will always catch up
Always it waits in the wings
Ideas swirl but don't stick
They appear but then run off like the rain on the windshield
One of those rainy day car rides, my head implodes
The atmosphere in this car, a mirror of my skull
Wet, damp, windows dripping and misted with cold
Walls of grey, nothing good on the radio, not a thought in my head
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
Lets take life and slow it down incredibly slow
Frame by frame
With two minutes that take ten years to live out
Yeah, let's do that
Telephone poles like praying mantis against the sky
Metal arms outstretched
So much land traveled, so little sense made of it
It doesn't mean a thing, all this land laid out behind us
I'd like to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while
I'm disgusted with petty concerns
Parking tickets, breakfast specials
Does someone just have to carry this weight?
Abstract typography, methane covenant
Linear gospel, Nashville sales lady, stocky emissary
Torturous lice, mad Elizabeth
Chemotherapy bullshit
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
The light within you shines like a diamond mine
Like an unarmed walrus, like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a skunk, eating it's own tail
Steam turbine, frog farm
Two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun
Hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blow job
Deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories
Movements, the movie, unfeeling, unreeling, about to begin
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
I've seen your hallway, you're a darn call away
I've hear your stairs creak, I can fix my mind on your yes
And your no, I'll film your face today in the sparkling canals
All red, yellow, blue, green brilliance and silver Dutch reflection
Racing thoughts, racing thoughts, all too real
You're moving so fast now, I can't hold your image
This image I have of your face by the window
Me standing beside you, arm on your shoulder
A catalog of images, flashing glimpses then gone again
Untethered to the posters soak in me, every clear afternoon now
I'll think of you, up in the air, twisting your heel
Your knees up around me, my face in your hair
You scream so well, your smile so loud, it still rings in my ears
I know a place we can go and I'm falling
Love so hard that you wish you were ten
Imitation, distant, tired of longing, clean my teeth
Stay the course, hold the wheel, steer on to freedom
Open all the boxes, open all the boxes
Open all the boxes, open all the boxes
Times Square Midday, newspaper buildings
News headlines going around, you watch as they go
And hope there's some good ones, those tree shadows in the park
They're all whispering, shake some leaves
Around six p.m., shadows across the cobblestones
Girl in front of bathroom mirror, she slow and careful
Paints her face green and mask like
Like my cheese, portrait with green stripe
Long shot through apartment window
A monologue on top but no girl in shot
The light within me shines like a diamond mine
Like an unarmed walrus
Like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a snake eating its own tail
A steam turbine, frog pond
Two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun
Hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blow job
Deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories
Movements, the movie, unreeling, about to begin
Oh, great by me
Yeah? Mine were alright, wasn't my best one but who cares?
That's the spirit
Lyrics submitted by PapaSlurp, edited by TheBowser, carsonalso, Carbonated Dan, Starkey
Be Safe Lyrics as written by Lee Ranaldo Gary John Jarman
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Great version of a great song,
No Surprises
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I was thinking about it like this, mostly when I was trying to see how "Open all the boxes" fit in with any interpretation.
Oftentimes when a signficiant other leaves you, people pack everything that reminds them of that person in boxes and put them away somewhere. He's saying to open all the boxes, let those things back out into the light of day.
Whether he's gotten over the heartbreak is up for debate, but it seems like he wants those feelings, emotions, memories, and moments back in his life, not tucked away somewhere.
And after he says it once, he repeats himself over and over again, as with each box he opens he feels rejuvenated, alive, and waves of new emotions that he wants to keep opening boxes, both literal and metaphorical, of memories hes stashed away, probably both good and bad.
Or...I could be talking out my ass.