A group of children, the singer's younger self among them, go to an urban playground on a winter afternoon. The sunlight is already disappearing from the swings, the slides, the chainlink fence (...'dimming diamonds/Scattering...'), and the lyrics carry a tangible sense of cold ('wintertime', 'trembling', 'freeze' tag).
The game the children play has the chaser 'tagging' others, who must then stand motionless until freed by someone else. They're running around in the falling darkness, absorbed in their game, raucous with the excitement of it.
Then singer and a friend (a boy) leave freeze tag behind, and use the less innocent templates of screen icons (Dean-Dietrich, Bogart-Bacall) to pose in roles that will one day be in earnest. 'Slow fade now to black...' - movie terminology, linking the screen stars, the fading light, and a fading of childhood innocence ('Do you see/Where I've been hiding/In this hide-and-seek?').
'We can only say yes now...' Since they're still children, they can't yet say 'yes' (that token of compliance) to each other, so for in the meantime they practice on the sky, the street, the night.
For me, this song is about the fading of innocence, with children performing play versions of what will later be real and serious - freeze tag a metaphor for adult interplay (where it's possible to be rendered motionless by someone until freed by someone else), the movie roleplay a precursor of romantic relationships, and the playground (with its grown-up propensities to 'slides into the past' and 'swings of indecision') a play version of the world that waits beyond its chain-link fence.
A group of children, the singer's younger self among them, go to an urban playground on a winter afternoon. The sunlight is already disappearing from the swings, the slides, the chainlink fence (...'dimming diamonds/Scattering...'), and the lyrics carry a tangible sense of cold ('wintertime', 'trembling', 'freeze' tag).
The game the children play has the chaser 'tagging' others, who must then stand motionless until freed by someone else. They're running around in the falling darkness, absorbed in their game, raucous with the excitement of it.
Then singer and a friend (a boy) leave freeze tag behind, and use the less innocent templates of screen icons (Dean-Dietrich, Bogart-Bacall) to pose in roles that will one day be in earnest. 'Slow fade now to black...' - movie terminology, linking the screen stars, the fading light, and a fading of childhood innocence ('Do you see/Where I've been hiding/In this hide-and-seek?').
'We can only say yes now...' Since they're still children, they can't yet say 'yes' (that token of compliance) to each other, so for in the meantime they practice on the sky, the street, the night.
For me, this song is about the fading of innocence, with children performing play versions of what will later be real and serious - freeze tag a metaphor for adult interplay (where it's possible to be rendered motionless by someone until freed by someone else), the movie roleplay a precursor of romantic relationships, and the playground (with its grown-up propensities to 'slides into the past' and 'swings of indecision') a play version of the world that waits beyond its chain-link fence.