Thinking of a Place

This is such an incredible, moving song. I've probably listened to it over 100 times and it is as close to perfection as any band could ever strive/hope for. What stands out to me in particular (without knowing exactly what instruments the band used) - are reverb, harmonica, pedal steel guitar. It truly amazes me how someone can write something so beautiful on paper and work with a group of truly gifted musicians to transform intensely private feelings into a song. That is not an easy thing to do, as it must involve revealing very personal thoughts. I will never really understand how it is done, and that's ok because I like that mystery. Mr. Granduciel's voice is so many things to me - haunting, ethereal, poignant, striking, and aesthetically stunning. The sheer amount of work the band must have done to make this song sound the way it does just represents an outstanding dedication to art - there is nothing easy about making music like this.

I have never written any song review, been listening to music nonstop for about 35 years. There are so many songs, yet only a few can move me the way this one does. I've only been to a handful of concerts (not into crowds) however if I ever got the chance to see them, I would go. Thank you for making this extraordinary music.

At first listen it reminds of the lyrics Peter Gabriel might have written ages ago with Genesis on the double LP "Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" I like the sound! Check it out. It's well worth a listen! MS

In the first verse Adam describes a place he adored in the past and still cherish. He met a special girl there who interested him in a strange way.

In the second verse he continues describing his experience of that magical moment. The girl had something mysterious in her way of being that kept him at a distance but he didn't mind because just looking at her was already too much.

In the following chorus and verse he describes the effect she has on him; all his thoughts seem to fit in place since he is with her.

In the fifth and sixth verse he acknowledges she is the answer to all of his doubts and uncertainties.

To me these lyrics express the way a special individual can affect your mental state. I think a person can only influence someone this dramatic when he or she is truly on the same emotional and mental level as you. I think you can only understand this when you know someone that special.

This songs isn't defenitlely not about a girl of a love song. Adam Granduciel said in an interview that he has panic-attacks. They come suddenly, and gives him the worst attacks possibly. It gives him so much stress, and this is the darkness he had to deal with sometimes. Anyone who isnt't familiair with these attacks (as in: you didn't had them), doesn't understand how 'dark' this is. 'see it trough my eyes...'

But he has overcome these panic attacks. Something lead Adam Granduciel trought the light, pulled him from the water.

It's a very sad song, of someone who had to overcome a hard period. Someone who was moving through the dark, but now can finally see the sun again.

I've always interpreted this incredibly gorgeous song to be, pretty straightforwardly, about the equivocation of love and place. All of the memories we have of love, of something real and true that once knocked us off our feet, are attached to place – it is hard to even think back on the moments in which we felt true love without thinking about the place that gave birth to it.

The memories Granduciel sings about in the first verses are such places, and they are offset against his present, which is dark (hence impossible to get one's bearings in) save for the moon and its guidance to something better. The key, to me, is found in the titular chorus line: "I'm thinking of a place, and it feels so very real".

As someone who's traveled across the world to be with loved ones more than once, this is such a poignant line. This act of imagining real love as something coinciding with – perhaps only possible within – a particular kind of place one has imagined – is such a vivid, melancholy, desperate, yet life-affirming thing. The music brilliantly mirrors this double feeling of sadness and beauty.

The album title with it\'s three simple words evokes for me such a sense which this song on the album epitomises. The sense of the primal cause of what we call art. Something which when spoken is not known and when known can\'t be articulated. Like the Heisnburg\'s uncertainty principle of creativity. Well it has meaning I feel certain; which is exactly why I can\'t tell you exactly what it means. I want you to make no mistake this is the true art; like prophecy but better, because prophecy tells us what we may not know but but art what we may not understand.