Rethink.

Lightness
Death Cab for Cutie

There’s a tear in the fabric
of your favorite dress
And I’m sneaking glances.

Looking for the patterns in static
They start to make sense
the longer I’m at it.

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho

Your heart is a river
that flows from your chest
through every organ.

Your brain is the dam
and I am the fish
who can’t reach the cord [core?].

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho

Oh, instincts are misleading
you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling
they don’t tell you what you know you should want.

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho

Oh, instincts are misleading
you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling
they don’t tell you what you know you should want.

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho

Ivory lines lead
oo wha-ho

Comment:

I got the lyrics for this song from songmeanings.net and if you get a chance, you should skim the comments underneath the lyrics. This entry is more or less a thinking-through of why interpretations go in so many directions. I know the commentators are just kids for the most part, but it is really amazing to me how fast interpretation can go awry, how we need something in common at base in order to understand each other and not just be ranting.

The ironic thing is that this song’s lyrics are comment-worthy because they address that last issue in some small way. I mean, I know it’s risky posting an interpretation of this song given how many bad ones there are out there, and also given the fact that I don’t know if the final word of the second stanza is “cord” or “core.”

I think the first stanza and the idea of “ivory lines” are pretty obvious. It’s clever, don’t get me wrong, really clever: there’s a tear, but the folds of the dress, the “patterns in static,” serve to cover up the tear at points (what makes attraction electric? Seeing or not seeing everything?). The ivory lines are skin or underwear, more than likely skin: let’s just go for the more visceral image, since all underwear would be is one degree removed from that.

Now comes the hard image. What does it mean for a heart to be like a river? Probably that there is no heart in this girl; there is only a brain where emotion (think about this word in its most literal sense) stops. What’s curious is how the speaker thinks himself a fish caught in the river that is her. That idea alone means that a “core”/”cord” ambiguity can be resolved either way, and one gets the same theme: either way, our speaker can’t be hooked by her, or get through to her on the level he wants to.

The bit about instincts – our speaker is a fish, after all, residing in schools – involves a self-admonition: “you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling.” Agreed, it would create better interpretations if one were more dispassionate and willing to take in multiple possibilities before pronouncing what something could mean. But on a higher level, all there is that is a “response” to “instincts” is the negative nature of most laws: “don’t do this, don’t do that.” With so much emphasis on what one can’t do, how could one conceive of what is the greatest good?

Do note that Death Cab’s lyrics are exceptionally tricky here. For me to make the argument above, it would be better if the lyrics read “they don’t tell you what you should want.” They say instead “they don’t tell you what you know you should want,” which is reconcilable with our not trying to teach how to find and love what is good, but also indicates that we do know what is good and do not need to be told. In addition, the last statement is perfectly reconcilable with the idea that she is what I want, and that’s a “good” thing too.

So what shouldn’t be thought? Should the speaker not have feelings for the girl? Should he not be thinking about how it is an impossibility for him to get her, because she is mentally closed to him? Is her mental closedness a result of her being loved the only way she engages the idea of love? Is his instinct that he lusts, or that he wants to be restrained in lust? Is there a real distinction between instinct and knowledge, given that things make “sense” based only on time? Does he know what is better, or not, or could he know what is better? I think the kids at songmeanings rightly got super-confused about this song. There’s an enormous amount going on here, and ambiguity is sometimes the refuge of those being less than intellectually honest. It’s easy to say that lots of things are confusing and therefore no one can have the right answer, so one can do whatever.

And that’s why sometimes one needs to look at the beginning to figure out the end. “Lightness” implies The Unbearable Lightness of Being, drunkenness, the lack of knowing what is good (or even what gives control), and also ties into the electricity metaphor invoked by “static” and the brightness of “ivory lines.” I think the best metaphor for solving the problem is to ask what makes us substantial – when we consider that we are potential, and that our substance comes about through fulfillment of the promise that we are, we realize that education is a taking of what we already know and a shaping of that into something greater.

The word cognate with our word “music” in Greek meant a complete liberal-arts education: that was what was needed to recite and interpret Homer. Music was what made the guardians of the Republic strong, and what helps make the social order in the Laws last. Once upon a time, there was something common at base, in music, before everyone acted and focused on their own individual base desires…

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