This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
I let the car drift some
Eye your uncomfortable pose in profile
The postures of long drives
That endless cycling of your numb and near sleeping parts
And you lean much harder than you need when the road curves
Swerve through traffic and the cracks in the ground
Every gesture you require of a drive like this night
When you fight now you just head out of town
I let the wheel go over center lines
Inside a place without time, a loop through history
Eye you in periphery now prone in the passenger seat
It's a mystery the ways you can sleep
I want to leave here for where nobody goes
I want to breathe in the air of all those sprawling ancient spaces on earth
You said we're so scared of alone and I knew what you meant
You want to go where it glows all those places where your watch doesn't work
You were riding those nights on the highway
Always hiding out inside a songwriter's dream there
Like a scene from a song, "Born to Run," or maybe "Running on Empty"
Ones where they would leave
Certain nights when you'd fight you couldn't stick around
So you'd head out of town
Just hit the highway and drive
Certain nights when you'd fight it was fine
But it shook you when the baby would cry
Why did you always turn around in the end?
To hear the shattering of glass on the door again?
So loud the baby couldn't sleep anymore?
What didn't you find that you were looking for?
Your mother called a hardware
Set you up an interview
An answer to an ad
The bosses' daughter still remembers dinner where her father said
He wouldn't stick his neck out for trouble again
But they did then
And those days you'd wake up and just decide you wouldn't show
He'd show up at your door
Nights you'd skip town
He'd follow you out
Pretty soon you started falling for their daughter
And she fell for you
Drive roll every window down
Let the desert enter heavy and primitive in
Drift till rumble strips sound
Time moves so slow but I know that you meant what you said
You want to go where it's frozen
All those places where the highways don't reach
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere that time is irrelevant
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere the spaces are infinite
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere you don't feel the hours pass by
You identified the flowers on the road
I rolled the windows down and shut off the radio
Did you ever think you'd end up here
All those late nights you spent driving alone?
You were riding to hide or you were looking for a brand new life
Did you ever think you'd find one back home?
Did you even think you'd get out alive?
Could you imagine then the love you now know?
I think history's a system of roads and there's nowhere it doesn't go
I pulled over to the side and felt no time
Off the highway with the landscape aglow
Still not sure what we were trying to find
I only know we went home
Eye your uncomfortable pose in profile
The postures of long drives
That endless cycling of your numb and near sleeping parts
And you lean much harder than you need when the road curves
Swerve through traffic and the cracks in the ground
Every gesture you require of a drive like this night
When you fight now you just head out of town
I let the wheel go over center lines
Inside a place without time, a loop through history
Eye you in periphery now prone in the passenger seat
It's a mystery the ways you can sleep
I want to leave here for where nobody goes
I want to breathe in the air of all those sprawling ancient spaces on earth
You said we're so scared of alone and I knew what you meant
You want to go where it glows all those places where your watch doesn't work
You were riding those nights on the highway
Always hiding out inside a songwriter's dream there
Like a scene from a song, "Born to Run," or maybe "Running on Empty"
Ones where they would leave
Certain nights when you'd fight you couldn't stick around
So you'd head out of town
Just hit the highway and drive
Certain nights when you'd fight it was fine
But it shook you when the baby would cry
Why did you always turn around in the end?
To hear the shattering of glass on the door again?
So loud the baby couldn't sleep anymore?
What didn't you find that you were looking for?
Your mother called a hardware
Set you up an interview
An answer to an ad
The bosses' daughter still remembers dinner where her father said
He wouldn't stick his neck out for trouble again
But they did then
And those days you'd wake up and just decide you wouldn't show
He'd show up at your door
Nights you'd skip town
He'd follow you out
Pretty soon you started falling for their daughter
And she fell for you
Drive roll every window down
Let the desert enter heavy and primitive in
Drift till rumble strips sound
Time moves so slow but I know that you meant what you said
You want to go where it's frozen
All those places where the highways don't reach
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere that time is irrelevant
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere the spaces are infinite
You want to go where it glows
Somewhere you don't feel the hours pass by
You identified the flowers on the road
I rolled the windows down and shut off the radio
Did you ever think you'd end up here
All those late nights you spent driving alone?
You were riding to hide or you were looking for a brand new life
Did you ever think you'd find one back home?
Did you even think you'd get out alive?
Could you imagine then the love you now know?
I think history's a system of roads and there's nowhere it doesn't go
I pulled over to the side and felt no time
Off the highway with the landscape aglow
Still not sure what we were trying to find
I only know we went home
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Where things get kind of confusing, not 100% as to if this applies to the main narrator or if it's just another kind of left field story but the implications of a decaying relationship makes me believe it is.
"you were riding those nights on the highway always hiding out inside a songwriter's dream there like a scene from a song, "born to run" or maybe "running on empty" ones where they would leave certain nights when you'd fight you couldn't stick around" These & previous lines (and mainly the last one) make me believe when the couple would fight one of them would leave and drive.
"certain nights when you'd fight it was fine but it shook you when the baby would cry why did you always turn around in the end? to hear the shattering of glass on the door again? so loud the baby couldn't sleep anymore? what didn't you find that you were looking for?" This completely fucks me up. The married couple, I believe, they don't have a baby - they definitely don't actually. So is it the main narrator's parents, as in HUDSONVILLE? Or just a completely random couple? The talks of falling for a daughter also lead me to believe it's not the main couple..
"somewhere you don't feel the hours pass by you identified the flowers on the road i rolled the windows down and shut off the radio" In Objects In Space, the narrator's s/o bought a book entitled "Identifying Wildflowers" which confirms the idea that this song applies to the the main couple/narrator.
"i pulled over to the side and felt no time off the highway with the landscape aglow still not sure what we were trying to find i only know we went home" Mentioned in Stay Happy There, they go on road trips and such trying to find something to sort of remedy the failing relationship. Not sure what it was but they ended up giving up and going home.
So this song either changes perspective or there's some real weird fuckery going about with this apparent baby. That and the hardware store interviews and falling for the bosses daughter, it totally throws me off. But the last couple lines absolutely apply to our main couple, who's relationship is now failing and they can't find a remedy on the roads.
Edit - Can confirm the song switches perspectives from the narrator's parents (in 1981 maybe) and the road trips of him and his s/o. <br /> "Father alone on the highway" is a line from Extraordinary Dinner Party. The bosses daughter was possibly his mother, and the interviewee was his father. The baby is the narrator, as in HUDSONVILLE.
Probably the most confusing and also one of my favorite songs on the album. Jordan is in love with the pronouns "I" and "you" which always makes it difficult to figure out who he is talking to or about, but that's his style and it works.
I reached the same conclusions as parttimelovah: The story jumps back and forth between 1) the narrator and his lover on their road trip(s) through the desert referenced in "For Mayor in Splitsville" and "Stay Happy There" in the present day (2009) and 2) the narrator's father driving alone trying to escape his crumbling marriage when the narrator was a baby (1981). Thus, this song connects the past to the present, and illustrates that through this family's history the open road has been as integral a setting as the rooms of the houses they lived in.
I would like to point out that the couple in HUDSONVILLE, MI 1956 and THE CHILD WE LOST 1963 isn't the narrator's parents but his grandparents, and their children are the narrator's father/uncles/aunts. The album covers three generations.
It's interesting that the narrator's father worked at a hardware store in his youth. Jordan has stated in interviews that he he and his cousin Brad (the drummer) work (or at least used to work) in a hardware store in Grand Rapids, a fact that made it into the song "Edward Benz, 27 Times" from Wildlife which is based on a true story.