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"
I run the numbers through the floor
Here's how it goes
I crack the codes I crack the codes
That end the war
The Hour
I pushed a note under your door
Here's how it goes
Things come to blows
But we don't want this anymore
No, we don't want this anymore
I crack the codes you end the war
I hear the clockwork in your core
Time strips the gears till you
Forget what they were for
I push the numbers through your pores
I crack the codes I crack the codes
To end the war
How's my living
You can call
Encrypted numbers
On bathroom stalls
There's something burning
It casts a pall
It's melting numbers right
Off the walls
Here's how it goes
I crack the codes I crack the codes
That end the war
The Hour
I pushed a note under your door
Here's how it goes
Things come to blows
But we don't want this anymore
No, we don't want this anymore
I crack the codes you end the war
I hear the clockwork in your core
Time strips the gears till you
Forget what they were for
I push the numbers through your pores
I crack the codes I crack the codes
To end the war
How's my living
You can call
Encrypted numbers
On bathroom stalls
There's something burning
It casts a pall
It's melting numbers right
Off the walls
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"I hear the clockwork in your core time strips the gears till you forget what they were for"
In the context of this being a break up song, the above lines kind of feel like a reference to a biological imperative to reproduce. Maybe Bird wanted kids and his partner didn't, or vice versa. Clockwork in your core = biological clock...
just a thought
I think there's definitely something to that, although not necessarily in terms of wanting children... just the idea of a body and its physical desires as a clockwork mechanism, and with the gears being worn down by time and use so that you get to the point where you're just going through the motions without really feeling anything, or knowing why you're doing it. It could refer to sexuality, or just the state of being in a romantic relationship. Either way, it fits with the overall theme of the breakup song.
That's what I related that bit of song to.
Whenever I hear that line, I automatically think of how people feel right after a breakup, like how a lot of people say "I'll never love again, etc.." I hear the clockwork in your core, time strips the gears till you forget what they were for makes me think of the heart, and how after a while you kind of just wanna forget about heart break and love all together. Or, you know, something along those lines.