Challengers

In an NPR Interview Carl Newman recently revealed that he wrote this song after having met the woman he is currently married to. They discovered they loved each other but were both married to someone else and had to walk away and say 'Let's meet again someday". Amazing songwriter to capture these difficult emotions so well.

I agree about the affair - but I think it's more that that. They're on the verge of running away thus the line, 'until we clear the accounts' and then they'll head into the unknown together.

Just wanted to mention, The Challengers of the Unknown was a fairly well known(at the time) comicbook published by DC. They were created by Jack "The King" Kirby, who also cocreated Captain America, Spiderman, The New Gods(Darkseid), The Hulk, Silver Surfer, The Fantastic Four, and countless others. The Challengers were a band of adventurers.

I'm almost positive the line is "Wander the West Village in flames".

The couple stays together all night, and then when dawn comes, they wander around in the West Village, "in flames" from their love/passion and also from the light of the rising sun.

Hmm. You might be right, butterflykiss...but I think that might be taking the lyrics too literally. In the lines, "on the walls of the day/in the shade of the sun/we wrote down" indicates that they didn't write anything down, but that their time together lingers in memory. The "vision of us" that they were writing down was just a feeling, or a dream. If you take "when we clear the accounts" literally, it does suggest they're going to run away, but it could also mean that they should keep their memories alive until the time comes to forget each other.

Funny, I thought it was "You wanted the West Village in flames!"

west village in flames! me too, doesn't that make more sense?

Perhaps so zeeb - I think it works quite nicely if it isn't completely literal, as if they're dreaming that they can run away together. yet, they both know it can't happen. I think I prefer that!!

There is a lot of "exploration" imagery in this song. I believe that the first verse says "WANDER the west village in plains" because "one of the west village" doesn't make sense. Also, in the beginning of the second verse, I think it should be "we RODE down" not "we wrote down" - because they're not talking about writing anything. It's such a gorgeous song, and I see images of them in the plains, together alone and falling in love.

Shea -- I'd have to give the song another close listen, but "wander the west village..." sounds right. Have no idea about "plains" v. "flames"; but I never heard flames, myself.

But I do think it's "we wrote down"; I don't know if the next line "another vision of us" makes that much sense otherwise. I suppose it could be disconnected. But I think they are talking about writing something -- another vision of themselves, in the future, where they're together. But they're not writing it in a concrete way; they're writing it on "the walls of the day". Days don't have walls; their vision of the future is uncertain, fragile.