MUSIC TRACK REVIEW
Band: Death Cab for Cutie
Song: Brothers on a Hotel Bed – from the Album PLANS
“I want to do things so wild with you that I don’t know how to say them.” – Anais Nin to Henry Miller
Do you remember the vigor of your youth? Do you recall the feeling of waking up earlier and being the more excited to embrace what the day could bring you, and having far less groans about it?
Has your passion for life (or for someone you used to love so powerfully) been snatched away, kidnapped by the memories you wish you could visit back into time, leaving this now dreary present to some obscure place in your past, discarded and abandoned?
Why? Has regret filled your heart so much, and left no room in it to breath, to laugh, to experience a new and exciting joy?
Do you not remember your first kiss, how that felt? When someone told you the first time that they loved you, or What about your first dance? What about your first embrace alone in the dark with someone you would wish that experience could forever endure?
I love this song because it’s a powerful song in capturing a spirit of a person whose once burning heart has been dominated (conquered) by the cold passage of time; as sad as it is…
I believe it’s important to remember that this awesome love we feel, expressed as primal passion and given to someone we love doesn’t change in the least in WHAT IT IS, or WHAT IT’S CAPABLE OF, but rather it’s US that changes. We replace youthful naivety with a bitter sort of reservedness. We do this to hold back to some degree, perhaps spare our-self some theoretical future pain, but at what cost to those who deserve our full measure of love, our most raw and powerful passions? Will the person you profess to love now become numb and distant to your half-hearted advances someday, forever being cut-off to the overwhelming love and intimacy you COULD show it only it arose from the wellspring of a younger heart? Will they become as the person in this song is, expressed as being little more than a brother (sibling) in your bed, cold and distant…where the spark is truly gone??
Short of some terrible physical infirmity that prevents such a powerful love from seeking it’s absolute highest physical expressions, let it not be so! May your feet forever “break from the concrete” and may you never let a day go by that could have been spent in the arms and the smiles and ridiculous unbridled laughter of such a fiery and all-consuming embrace.
LYRICS:
You may tire of me as our December sun is setting ’cause I’m not who I used to be
No longer easy on the eyes but these wrinkles masterfully disguise the youthful boy below
Who turned your way and saw something he was not looking for
Both a beginning and an end
But now he lives inside someone he does not recognize when he catches his reflection on accident
On the back of a motorbike with your arms outstretched trying to take flight, leaving everything behind
But even at our swiftest speed we couldn’t break from the concrete in the city where we still reside
And I have learned that even landlocked lovers yearn for the sea, like navy men,
‘Cause now we say goodnight from our own separate sides like brothers on a hotel bed
Understanding Life, Music, Money, and Philosophy. 