The melancholic piano suggests to me that the soldier is decesased, and this is a yard sale with his old belongings. The understated emotion of the narrator in going from describing useless junk like an old radio, to the important stuff like war medals and cufflinks (perhaps from a wedding?) implies that it is somebody who doesn't have any emotional connection to the soldier. Perhaps the landlord he was renting from, or some distant relative, or simply somebody who collected his junk as it was being thrown out, and is now selling it.
In the bigger sense, the meaning I get out of this song is that all things go in the end. The things that one accumulates over their life are all just things, and in the end will be discarded in one way or another. The events that happen in ones life are where true meaning occurs, but it is meaning that only exists within the memories of the people who experienced and remember them. Life is fleeting.
The melancholic piano suggests to me that the soldier is decesased, and this is a yard sale with his old belongings. The understated emotion of the narrator in going from describing useless junk like an old radio, to the important stuff like war medals and cufflinks (perhaps from a wedding?) implies that it is somebody who doesn't have any emotional connection to the soldier. Perhaps the landlord he was renting from, or some distant relative, or simply somebody who collected his junk as it was being thrown out, and is now selling it.
In the bigger sense, the meaning I get out of this song is that all things go in the end. The things that one accumulates over their life are all just things, and in the end will be discarded in one way or another. The events that happen in ones life are where true meaning occurs, but it is meaning that only exists within the memories of the people who experienced and remember them. Life is fleeting.