03-13-19
When I was a Freshmen in college, I quickly fell in love with the ability to play my music at nearly any hour. Music became so much more entwined with my life than ever before. I was wholly infatuated with the way it could make me feel. I worked hours on end crafting playlists, and mixes, for all occasions, including playlists to sleep too.
It was around this same time that I met my first serious girlfriend. To my luck, she was as fascinated with music as I was, with a mind in interpreting lyrics like no one I had ever met. This song was on one of my nighttime mixes, a nighttime mix I played nearly every night for months. I never thought much of this song being in the mix, to me it was nothing more than a beautiful Death Cab for Cutie song… to her, she heard a series of subtext that was never consciously placed.
I believe this was one of the first seeds of distrust in what would be arguably the most tumultuous romantic relationship I have endured. It led to one of our first fights. The fight itself was a blip during the life of our courtship, it would be dwarfed thousands of times over, but it’s damage so early on would create massive ripples.
It would be years later when I was in a completely different space, experiencing life with other people that I fully began to understand the pain she was harboring in response to those initial feelings. I had become a shadow of my former self. Much colder and detached, believing that a life devoid of meaningful connection would yield better emotional stability. For whatever reason, this behavior and attitude proved to be an effective lure for a specific type of person. I had found myself in situations where I was acting carelessly with other’s emotions, saying things I didn’t mean, knowing that I always had an “exit plan” in place. Everything to me at that time was a temporary fix to a foundational problem.
I would catch myself at points saying something only because I knew it’s what they wanted to hear. Until one day I caught myself in the mirror—the shame wore thick on me, and it was eating away at whatever light I used to have. I allowed myself and others to believe that what we were doing was something so much more… but it was vile, and it was cheap.
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
This is the moment that you know
That you told her that you loved her
But you don’t
You touch her skin and then you think
That she is beautiful
But she don’t mean a thing to me
Yeah, she is beautiful
But she don’t mean a thing to me
[Verse 2]
I spent two weeks at Silver Lake
The California sun
Cascading down my face
There was a girl with light brown streaks
And she was beautiful
But she didn’t mean a thing to me
Yeah, she was beautiful
But she didn’t mean a thing to me
[Bridge]
I wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking
As we moved together in the dark
And all the friends that I was telling
And all the playful misspellings
And every bite I gave you left a mark
And tiny vessels oozed into your neck
And formed the bruises
That you said you didn’t want to fade
But they did, and so did I that day
[Verse 3]
All I see are dark grey clouds
In the distance, moving closer with every hour
So when you ask, “Is something wrong?”
I think, “You’re damn right there is
But we can’t talk about it now”
No, we can’t talk about it now
[Verse 4]
So one last touch, and then you’ll go
And we’ll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beautiful
But you don’t mean a thing to me
Yeah, you are beautiful
But you don’t mean a thing to me
Yeah, you are beautiful
But you don’t mean a thing to me