First up; this song destroys me every time I listen to it.
Usually my emotional reaction to a song lessons pretty significantly after a while, but god this really has stuck with me.
It's just so genuinely plaintively longing and hopeless.
Interpretation wise It's definitely Jamie McDermott's relationship with 'Jake' having come to an end, as others here have already noted. My point of contention is whether Jake has left him, whether they grew apart or whether Jake has died.
Pointing toward Jake having left him is the fairly clear 'I awake in the night, to hear the engines purr'; he's waking up to the car starting up, with Jake leaving him in the dead of night. The 'of you and me ever changing, moving on now moving fast' also feels pretty definitive- two men gone their separate ways.
And the thorn in his side, the shame and pride, could be that he knows he caused this to happen, he's somehow responsible for (or at least feels he is) the crane knocking down all the things they were.
But the imagery of the note on the wind, and its burial, with the evocative links to earth and soil gives a feeling of death to the whole thing. And really the whole song's tone feels so final- 'I am lost', hearing the echo of his name on the wind. It seems more than having someone you love leave. Sounds like decay.
So my thought would be that in his leaving, Jake dies, and Jamie never gets the chance to redeem himself, doesn't have the option to repair the relationship and is stuck in this state of perpetual self hatred. Bleeding for a year. Needing to tell him how much he loves him, but being totally unable to. Writing it in a note that he knows cannot reach him. Buried deep in the ground.
Anyways, freaking love this song, especially how unabashedly gay it is.
I'm normally not one to go in for the whole gay suffering trope, always looking for more positive portrayals in media for a slight self-worth boost/optimistic future, you know?
But this set of lyrics is so damn powerful I'm willing to put that aside for a bit.
First up; this song destroys me every time I listen to it. Usually my emotional reaction to a song lessons pretty significantly after a while, but god this really has stuck with me. It's just so genuinely plaintively longing and hopeless.
Interpretation wise It's definitely Jamie McDermott's relationship with 'Jake' having come to an end, as others here have already noted. My point of contention is whether Jake has left him, whether they grew apart or whether Jake has died.
Pointing toward Jake having left him is the fairly clear 'I awake in the night, to hear the engines purr'; he's waking up to the car starting up, with Jake leaving him in the dead of night. The 'of you and me ever changing, moving on now moving fast' also feels pretty definitive- two men gone their separate ways. And the thorn in his side, the shame and pride, could be that he knows he caused this to happen, he's somehow responsible for (or at least feels he is) the crane knocking down all the things they were.
But the imagery of the note on the wind, and its burial, with the evocative links to earth and soil gives a feeling of death to the whole thing. And really the whole song's tone feels so final- 'I am lost', hearing the echo of his name on the wind. It seems more than having someone you love leave. Sounds like decay.
So my thought would be that in his leaving, Jake dies, and Jamie never gets the chance to redeem himself, doesn't have the option to repair the relationship and is stuck in this state of perpetual self hatred. Bleeding for a year. Needing to tell him how much he loves him, but being totally unable to. Writing it in a note that he knows cannot reach him. Buried deep in the ground.
Anyways, freaking love this song, especially how unabashedly gay it is. I'm normally not one to go in for the whole gay suffering trope, always looking for more positive portrayals in media for a slight self-worth boost/optimistic future, you know? But this set of lyrics is so damn powerful I'm willing to put that aside for a bit.