This song took a few listens before I realized how good it really is. I interpret it like this-
A boy can fall in love with a girl. He reads her attitude like she loves him too, and then he does everything in his power to bring the two of them together. His love for her is completely sincere, but she doesn't actually have any true intentions of being with him. So he ends up putting everything he has on the table, "like a worm out on a line," only to find that she didn't want the same thing.
The best line to me is "I don't believe that it's wrong to have heard love and dared the cost, but love can be a mistranslation, and lines can be crossed." He loved her, and held onto the hope that she loved him too. Sadly she did not feel the same way. His dreams were different than her's.
I love the hopefulness of the last line:
"...the writing on the wall looked just like water on the windowsill, it said love can be a curable disease."
It's pretty interesting to refer to unreciprocated love as a disease. Either way, there is solace in this song. In the instrumental, in the lyrics, all of it. I think Jeff Tweedy said something about the best songs being written in spite of pain. This song is a good example of that.
This song took a few listens before I realized how good it really is. I interpret it like this-
A boy can fall in love with a girl. He reads her attitude like she loves him too, and then he does everything in his power to bring the two of them together. His love for her is completely sincere, but she doesn't actually have any true intentions of being with him. So he ends up putting everything he has on the table, "like a worm out on a line," only to find that she didn't want the same thing.
The best line to me is "I don't believe that it's wrong to have heard love and dared the cost, but love can be a mistranslation, and lines can be crossed." He loved her, and held onto the hope that she loved him too. Sadly she did not feel the same way. His dreams were different than her's.
I love the hopefulness of the last line:
"...the writing on the wall looked just like water on the windowsill, it said love can be a curable disease."
It's pretty interesting to refer to unreciprocated love as a disease. Either way, there is solace in this song. In the instrumental, in the lyrics, all of it. I think Jeff Tweedy said something about the best songs being written in spite of pain. This song is a good example of that.