Poetry Blog #3

The song I'm choosing to analyze is Death Cab for Cutie's "What Sarah Said." The song is not a typical love song as it's not lovey dovey, but it's about love.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time

As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409

And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today

As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me

Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye

It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds

But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all

And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room

Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news

And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads

But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

So who's going to watch you die?

This song is set in a hospital, where there is the narrator and the narrator's love. The song is from the perspective of the dying narrator. That idea always confused me because for the longest time I interpreted the song as being from a person watching their loved one die, but it's the other way around (ex. "So who's going to watch you die?"). The song is based on an actual conversation between the songwriter's friend Sarah and her husband where she realized that, one day, one of them would have to watch the other die. The narrator is lamenting the fact that he/she is dying and he/she is asking his loved one who is going to watch him/her die, because the narrator won't be there for it. I can't pinpoint a definite favorite lyric of mine, but one that resonates with me is "I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all." It's a beautiful metaphor where the narrator is saying he/she is glad to have loved the other than to have never loved at all, and that losing him/her is better than never having him/her in the first place. Okay, to be honest, I want to explain every line of this song and its meaning to me, but I'm going to limit myself. I do want to talk about the first line, though. "Every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time" reminds the listener of their mortality. When we make plans, we don't think of the possibility that something could go horribly wrong. Making plans causes us to unknowingly pray that the plan will work out and that Father Time will not come to tell us our time has run out. Lastly, the lyric "It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds" refers to the inconsistency in human memory. It also blatantly has a simile where the realization of how foggy memories can be is compared to a "violent wind." I'll stop analyzing lines now, but I think this song is beautiful and heartbreaking and real. Not only are the lyrics unbelievably beautiful, but the instrumental is gorgeous. (Can you tell I love this song?)