CAB FOR THE HISTORY BOYS
Death Cab For Cutie - Tiny Vessels
It’s an experience that I imagine to be universal; we’ve all had it.
You’re lying, or sitting, (it doesn’t really matter which) on your bed in your room. You’re in one of those pensive, blue moods. You’re not unhappy, and you’re not sad. You’re drifting somewhere in between. And then a voice cuts through the room and speaks to you directly, and it’s as if someone has reached into your chest and wrapped their fingers around that space where you store all of your sentimentalities.
It contracts, and your sense of wonder expands.
I’ve had similar experiences with many Death Cab tracks. Ben Gibbard’s lyrics have a way of winding themselves around your mind and quietly refusing to budge from the deep recesses of your memory. This song is no exception.
Post break-up (be it weeks, months, and if you’re really unlucky, years), we sometimes search for something to encapsulate our experience. In my case, it’s usually a song that I go searching for. Often my attempts at finding the perfect song to summarise my erratic post break-up moods prove fruitless, which sends me spiralling further into half-arsed woe or trawling hopefully through artists on Spotify in search of that song. But on this occasion, the words to ‘Tiny Vessels’ drifted from my laptop speakers over to where I sat upon my bed, and encased within a few softly sung lines the relationship that had tried, tested and infuriated me:
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
All the playful misspellings
and every bite I gave you left a mark
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
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.”
The last 2 lines struck me as being unnervingly relevant. I was transported back to an office; I may have been self-consciously twirling my anxious body as I sat on a swivel chair. Hiding my eyes and my true feelings. Kind words and tender touches of my hand threw my resolve into doubt and I pushed my misgivings to the back of my mind.
To carry out a further extensive lyrical analysis would be to divulge too much of myself and my relationship with a particular person, but I can’t stress enough the impact of this song upon me that evening, and with every listen since.
In Alan Bennett’s fantastic play, ‘The History Boys’, an English teacher is discussing a poem with one of his young male students:
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
I can’t help feeling that this applies to music too. Sometimes, lyrics find their way to you. It can be during your darkest hour or your liveliest celebration. But I really believe that there’s a song out there for every situation, for every person who strives to put something into words but who needs to know that someone else has got there first.
Amy Claire Barnes
http://thursdayschild88.tumblr.com
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