Sparks and Flowers

So here's the thing.

I used to think a song and a poem had everything in common.

When you print out the lyrics for a song, the format looks exactly the same as a poem. When you say it out loud, it feels like you're reading a poem. And there's more.

But when Ms. Robbins was gone grading tests (EW) and we were left to work with our favorite song and analyze it in the same way you do with a poem, everything changed.

It was SO hard to read the song without wanting the music to go with it. I mean, I'm talking about Arcade Fire here. Arcade Fire, as in, some of the best music ever composed (or at least I think so.) Their lyrics are beautiful, but the music...

It drives me insane... that's how much I love it.

So I chose Crown of Love by Arcade Fire. I printed out the lyrics with joy, ready to show everyone how much I loved that song. Waiting to tell the story of when I walked past my living room, and there was my dad on the couch, reading a book listening to this song. And my mom is in the kitchen humming it. And how I realized that I had been listening to this song my entire life, but I never fully realized how amazing it was.

Seriously, I wish I could find a word to describe how much I love THIS SONG.

You better be crying when you finish listening to this. If you're not, I don't like you anymore.

Oh and you better listen to the whole thing... you need to hear every word to fully experience it.

What I love about this song, is how much it tells, how many stories I can think to fit into these words, but I'll never know who Arcade Fire is talking to. Or what really happened. Or why.

If you listen, Arcade Fire says, "If you still want me, please forgive me. Because the spark is not within me." Perfect example of what I was just talking about. What do we know? That they want forgiveness. They're sorry.

It doesn't seem like much, but I know that I can figure out a lot from that. Forgiveness is everything. If it weren't for forgiveness, my sister and I wouldn't have actually liked each other this morning. If it weren't for forgiveness, I wouldn't have been nice to my mom today. (But I'm never really nice to my mom...)

It's the line about the spark that I don't understand.

Another thing...

"In my heart there's flowers growing on the grave of our old love, since you gave me your straight answer."

It took me a while to do this, but I eventually made a connection to the two lines I just showed you above. This "spark" is not within whoever this person is anymore. Maybe the spark is the love. Or the "old love" in the grave. The old love that they had, that in his heart no longer exists. What does exist though, is the grave, with flowers. And I like to imagine that the flowers represent hope, that one day the spark will come back, and the grave will go away... I can go on and on.

Well I think we all need some flowers.

If they do represent hope... that would be nice wouldn't it?

Just imagine, no matter what happened to you, you would always have a beautiful batch of roses or lilacs. And just as long as you remembered they were there, and that just as long as you thought of them, there would always be hope. Always a way out of the mess.

So my opinion changed, a poem is not the same thing as a song. They each need there own special somethings to make them who they are. But there is something I discovered that they have in common...

In class, we had to think of a definition of poetry. And I said that a poem can be anything that you want it to be. It can mean anything you want it to mean. So who knows? Arcade Fire might think these flowers represent something totally different than hope. But all I know is that right now, I think that hope is what these flowers are. I may not be right, but just like a poem I can think whatever I want to think.

They say it fades if you let it, love was made to forget it. i carved
your name across my eyelids, you pray for rain i pray for blindness.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
i snuffed it out before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the only thing that you keep changin' is your name. my love keeps
growin' still the same, just like cancer, and you won't give me a
straight answer!
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because your hands are not upon me.
i shrugged them off before my mom walked in my bedroom.
the pains of love, and they keep growin', in my heart there's flowers
growin' on the grave of our old love, since you gave me a straight
answer.
if you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love is not upon me.
if you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me.
it's not within me.
it's not within me.
you gotta be the one. you gotta be the way. your name is the only
word, the only word that i can say!

Listen to it again would you? And read the lyrics as you do so.

<3

(P.S. I just realized that my last entry was also about hope... sorry for the repetition. )

...Are you listening to the song like I told you too? I will be asking around.

Listen to these songs by Arcade Fire too!