I Got All In My Feelings and Explicated a Manchester Orchestra Song

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about facing a difficult year and trying to slowly write about it. Much of writing about it means facing what happened in my failed marriage. I’m horrible at stuff like that. Luckily, Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra is aces at it.

Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way: even though you can find song lyrics anywhere, I still hate posting someone else’s work, word for word. But to break it down, I kinda had to. Sorry. But, as part of this disclaimer, let me urge you to buy this album. A Black Mile To The Surface is a brilliant piece of work (easily an 8.8 … fuck you, Pitchfork, and the clique you claim) which deserves to be listened to straight through. Remember doing that? Back when we still bought albums. And we’d sit and listen to the whole thing while we read the liner notes. Anybody else remember the liner notes to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain? Ahhhh … good times. But really. To ease my guilt, go buy this album.

But enough about the downfalls of modern society and the limitations of contemporary musical criticism, let me tell you about that time Andy Hull read my mail.

Let's Get to Explicating!

“The Gold” is the second song off Black Mile To The Surface, and it’s the first of two (along with “The Moth”) (that I know of) songs which got some radio play (well deserved, as should “The Wolf”). So you may have heard it. When I first heard it, although I am a fan of the band, I had not yet purchased the album. I heard it in my car while driving my kids to school. My satellite radio has a feature where I can back up and play a song over. Which I did. Probably ten times in a row.

“The Gold” is about the breakdown of a relationship--the acceptance of the fact that everything of worth has been mined from it long ago.

In a literal paraphrase, the speaker is a wife of a worker in a gold mine. She has watched him go off to work the mine for so long that she has lost any memory of why they keep doing it. Why he keeps digging. Why she keeps waiting on him to come home. She realizes they were living a life of temporary satisfaction. Much like the mine itself, eventually all the gold would be stripped from it, and then everyone has to climb back out and walk away from it.

“The Gold”
​
Couldn't really love you any more You've become my ceiling

Right away. Reading my fucking mail, man. This was a feeling I had never really accepted. When you spend years of your life caring for someone with mental illness and problems with addiction, the relationship--the caretaking--becomes a ceiling. Whether or not I accepted it, I was only going to be able to go as far as one can go while tethered to someone in need of constant care. And as long as you love that person, you can never stop providing care. It is an enabling, crippling, cyclical relationship.

I don't think I love you anymore
​ That gold mine changed you

I feel like the “gold mine” can be any one of a number of things. In my case, it was mostly alcohol. This quest for gold started with the best of intentions. The husband in the song was seeking it out as a job, which provided for his family. I can appreciate those sentiments. Addiction never starts as addiction. It starts with a desire to enjoy life or numb something which is keeping you from enjoying life. But eventually, the gold mine changes a person. The quest becomes about finding the gold. Not the original intentions behind looking for it. And, when the change happens, no one can ever find enough gold.

You don't have to hold me anymore
Our cave's collapsing

Christ on a cracker. This one. There are no canaries in a marriage. When it starts to go, it’s too late. This line is like a fucking elegy, man. That ending alliteration rings so final. Complete. The imagery of telling someone that “you don’t have to hold me anymore” carries a power with it for anyone who has ended a relationship. Heartbreaking.

I don't wanna be me anymore

Fuck all. This. This all day. When you are in a long relationship, you begin to be identified as half of a whole. I’m sure most of us have experienced it before. You are not YOUR NAME. You are YOU&YOURPARTNER. And when that becomes who you are, if it breaks down … well, Andy said it better than I can.

My old man told me
"You don't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe that moment down."
Forty miles out of East Illinois
From my old man's heart attack

Although I don’t connect with the father imagery (it’s a common motif in Andy’s writing … my dad and I are good), I can completely appreciate the advice. I remember having the conversations which ended my marriage. While I don’t think I am in a place (nor may I ever be) where I can write in specifics about what was said, I can share the feeling of “breath[ing] that moment down.” So many times. There were so many moments I had to breathe down. A feeling can envelope your mind--where you can’t bring yourself to be angry or sad. You can’t do anything but close your eyes and breathe it down. Wait it out. This was actually the line that hit me the hardest. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone capture a feeling of mine so perfectly.

I believed you were crazy
You believed you loved me

Here we reach the chorus. And I don’t know if anyone can appreciate it quite like I do. The word believed has become a watered down term in today’s society. But here it carries power. When you believe someone is “crazy” it starts to color everything they do and every reaction or emotion you have connected to those actions. And when someone believes they love you, nothing is crazy. Very simple. And very complicated.

I don't wanna bark here anymore
Black hills, the colly
Wasn't really dangerous for us
We just catch you coughing

Colly is the dirt accumulated in a mining town. And, sidenote, “bark” is a fucking fantastic verb here. I imagine it came about in an effort to be able to use “coughing” later in the verse, but brilliant pivot, Andy. And great consonance with the b and c sounds--serves as a nice sense of onomatopoeia for coughing. And as far as meaning? Spot on. When you’re in it, you never see it. It doesn’t feel “dangerous.” The soot settles all around you until it is far, far too late.

What the hell are we gonna do?
A black mile to the surface
I don't wanna be here anymore
It all tastes like poison

The latter of these two sets of lines reiterates the “I don’t wanna be me anymore” line with a powerful metaphor. The first set contains the album title. There is such helplessness in it. The “black mile” one would see looking up out of the mine is a symbol of what happens in a failing marriage. There is so much space between where it started and where it ends. How can you ever hope to climb out of it? How can you even begin to peel apart the layers of lives grown together.

Can't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe that moment down
Forty hours out of Homestake
​And I'm trying to translate you again

Here we have a repeat of the pre-chorus, with the added line at the end. And what a beautiful line. I hear it as something deeper than simply attempting to understand someone. I hear in this line an admission that we never truly spoke the same language. I spent a lifetime translating you. And it was exhausting. Digging for that meaning every time. Prying out the nuances and finding my own words for them.

You and me, we're a daydrink
So lose your faith in me

The song ends with a few loops of chorus and pre-chorus, with these two lines woven in amidst both. The “daydrink” reference was one I actually thought I was inserting myself. I assumed I had misheard the line. I actually went searching for it on genius.com and found where they cited a tweet by Andy himself where he confirmed the line is actually “daydrink.” Perfect. I know the meaning of this line all too well. A daydrink is an experience which can seem so fun loving and high spirited at the time. But eventually, it darkens. We can all laugh about getting day drunk. I have joked about it myself. But once you have witnessed someone truly day drinking, the words sour in your mouth. I get it. “You and me, we’re a daydrink:” we were so fun once, but it isn’t fun anymore. And that last line is the money line of the song, to me. In the ending of a relationship, there is always one person who is more dependant on the other. One who hasn’t felt the fade quite as much. So I can hear the pleading in the tone of this line. It is the tone of a person begging for their partner to lose the faith which once sustained them both. Stop believing you love me.

So, yeah … sorry, Andy. But this one got all up in my emotions. With my next blog post, I’ll try to return to dropping excited f-bombs about cheesy television shows or something.