Hmm... Well I've been reading a fair amoung New Pornographer interpretations and one common theme I've seen from comments is "If you've lived it, you get it." I've never been divorced or had an affair, but I do have depression; as a result, in some sense I 'get' this one.
First consider that the narrator is not the subject. The narrator is extending empathy to the subject, attempting to assist him/her through the 'guilt' phase of re-entering relationships (vanished marvels) after a period of self-inflicted alienation. The narrator's familiarity with the metaphors of depression survival - of silent, self-inflicted psycho-spiritual (and more rarely physical) violence - indicates a personal experience similar to the subject's; further the narrator's statements 'to pay off a debt..." and "we brought the same blood back..." references the common experience of depression-survivors, who often feel they owe a debt to someone who helped them to come back to society that cannot be repaid directly that obligates them to repay that debt to someone else who suffers what they have suffered and who, only another survivor knows, will spend the rest of their lives 'circling the edge of the neverending.'
Hmm... Well I've been reading a fair amoung New Pornographer interpretations and one common theme I've seen from comments is "If you've lived it, you get it." I've never been divorced or had an affair, but I do have depression; as a result, in some sense I 'get' this one.
First consider that the narrator is not the subject. The narrator is extending empathy to the subject, attempting to assist him/her through the 'guilt' phase of re-entering relationships (vanished marvels) after a period of self-inflicted alienation. The narrator's familiarity with the metaphors of depression survival - of silent, self-inflicted psycho-spiritual (and more rarely physical) violence - indicates a personal experience similar to the subject's; further the narrator's statements 'to pay off a debt..." and "we brought the same blood back..." references the common experience of depression-survivors, who often feel they owe a debt to someone who helped them to come back to society that cannot be repaid directly that obligates them to repay that debt to someone else who suffers what they have suffered and who, only another survivor knows, will spend the rest of their lives 'circling the edge of the neverending.'