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Chasing the Sun Lyrics
It’s a really old city split between the dead and the living
So I thought to myself sitting on a graveyard shelf
As the echo of heartbeats from the ground below my feet
Filled a cemetery in the center of Queens
I started running the maze of the names and the dates
Some older than others, the skyscrapers’ little tombstone brothers
With Manhattan behind her 3 million stunning reminders
Built a cemetery in the center of Queens
You said remember that life is not meant to be wasted
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We’ll always be chasing the sun
So how do you do it with just words and just music
Capture the feeling that my earth is somebody’s ceiling
Can I deliver in sound, the weight of the ground
Of a cemetery in the center of Queens
There’s a history through her sent to us as a gift from the future
To show us the proof, more than that it’s to dare us to move
And to open our eyes and to learn from the sky
From a cemetery in the center of Queens
You said remember that life is not meant to be wasted
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We’ll always be chasing the sun
All we can do is try
And live like we’re still alive
It’s a really old city split between the dead and the living
So I thought to myself sitting on a graveyard shelf
And the gift of my heartbeat sounds like a symphony
Played by a cemetery in the center of Queens
You said remember that life is not meant to be wasted
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We will always be chasing the sun
All we can do is try
And live like we’re still alive
So I thought to myself sitting on a graveyard shelf
As the echo of heartbeats from the ground below my feet
Filled a cemetery in the center of Queens
Some older than others, the skyscrapers’ little tombstone brothers
With Manhattan behind her 3 million stunning reminders
Built a cemetery in the center of Queens
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We’ll always be chasing the sun
Capture the feeling that my earth is somebody’s ceiling
Can I deliver in sound, the weight of the ground
Of a cemetery in the center of Queens
To show us the proof, more than that it’s to dare us to move
And to open our eyes and to learn from the sky
From a cemetery in the center of Queens
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We’ll always be chasing the sun
All we can do is try
And live like we’re still alive
So I thought to myself sitting on a graveyard shelf
And the gift of my heartbeat sounds like a symphony
Played by a cemetery in the center of Queens
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run
We will always be chasing the sun
All we can do is try
And live like we’re still alive
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There is more than one way to interpret this song. For example, you can say that this song is about a musician standing in one of New York City's cemeteries — bordering the dead and the living - remembering someone that died. The memory of what this person said is how the musician will defeat the existential angst working inside her, because the infinite supply of hope in humans will provide for her the real-life movement toward an improved future. In the lines “All we can do is try, / And live like we’re still alive,” she is blurring reality and fantasy by giving that deceased person life again.
You can also say that this song has nothing to do with New York City. The “really old city” she speaks about is just the idea of dying, obviously a state of being that’s really old. Where she is then is an abstract space where the very planet she walks on is “a graveyard shelf.” No wonder the cemetery is being filled with the echo of heartbeats. But she is not crazy and knows that it is silent. But get this: this state of dying is intertwined with the life/death continuum, which is the essence of a living creature. One has to remember that if you are not dead, you are dying. And because you’re not a silent dead yet, you can be loud and hopeful. You can be alive, which, thanks to biology, is a state of being always run through MOTHERS, the royal “queens” of life.
Personally I think this song is about Sara herself. She moved to New York City, she broke up with her boyfriend and split up with her band.
The song itself is about her moving to New York and finding peace and solitude in a cemetery in Queens. Contemplating the various gravestones and their proximity to the city proper, I.E Manhattan.
Here's the real question -- who is the "her" in the song? Is it the cemetery? Is it the city? Is it a 3rd person outside view of herself as in she is reminding herself what she always used to say to others -- that life was not meant to be wasted? I think this is important because sometimes it seems as though she is speaking directly to "her" and sometimes she is speaking about "her".
In my own head, I see the singer/voice sitting in the cemetery, looking at her mother's grave and the city behind/beyond it and thinking about life and death and the things her mother used to tell her. In her musings, she comes to realize that there is no certainty in life -- all we can do is try -- but she also believes that we fulfill our lives when we are always chasing the sun. So fill up your lungs and just run! We'll never catch it, but that pursuit, that running, is what we are here to do.