Big Space

In glancing over the lyrics, I'm going to take a stab here and say that this song is about songwriting. Let's see if I'm right.

There is a metaphor of janitorial or maintenance work, perhaps for some sort of municipal job. We have words like "network," "fixing," "paperwork," "pipeline," "discipline," "weekend," and "swept up like garbage."

The idea of work pervades; the terms "network," and especially "paperwork" and "brain work" repeat several times throughout. Songwriting is not just a job, it's a grind. It's not just work, it's dirty work.

But how is any of this about songwriting, and not just about... work?

The song starts with a man telling our speaker to "stand in your own shoes" and to "look from your [own] direction."

The speaker responds that she'd "rather stand in someone else's." This is what John Keats called "negative capability," and what we today call empathy. Keats put it: "If a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel."

Seeing things from another's "perspective" is key to the poetic task. The dialogue continues that the two are "close to the middle" of something and "looking for a center," a unifying element between them that can allow them to communicate. But what if there isn't any, what if "it turns out to be hollow?" Well, then the act of looking itself becomes the solution, since "we" are doing that together; "We could be fixing what is broken."

Simply by her singing and her audience listening, an experience is being shared and a bridge is being built across the chasm between the two parties.

And now comes the chorus that says this is not just about series of forms being filled and filed. "Between the pen and the paperwork"-- in the space taken up by the ink forming the words, the "language" itself-- and "between the muscle and the brain"-- in that nerve, the "pipeline" that carries signals between the two...

...There must be "passion." There must be "feeling." Or else it is just "paperwork." It's not art without the passion and the feeling. It could be just "duty and... discipline." But she wants to go "beyond that."

Yes, but why is the metaphor not, say, working in a garden to produce flowers instead of vegetables? Or painting a portrait instead of a barn wall? Why use the metaphor of wires and pipes, of iron tools and aluminum filing cabinets, things that are colorless and lifeless?

Because not all songs are about love.

This one, for instance, is about "anger in a cold place." Maybe the man at the start is angry with her, frustrated at her always trying to see things from his side, from guessing his mindset and motives, from psychoanalyzing him. Instead of walking a mile in his shoes, as the cliche he quotes goes, she should "stand in [her] own shoes" for once, he tells her.

They are in a Catch-22. She feels that there is a gulf between them. She feels that she should be able to heal this rift if she can see things from his side of it. But it is this very pretentiousness that caused the problem to begin with! Her trying to see things from his side is his problem.

She intends it as empathy. He feels it as an invasion.

She has yet to sort this out. "All feelings fall into the big space"-- possibly the "hollow" between them-- and her method of dealing with "feeling" is to put it in a "pipeline." Maybe by writing about it, she can sort the pieces out.

Imagine a canyon. Throwing logs into it randomly is not going to create a bridge from one side to the other. Even if you fill it with haphazard logs, you still will not be able to get from one side to the other. One requires flat planks, lined up regularly-- some form of order-- a "network," a "pipeline"-- to create that bridge to carry feelings from her to him and back.

But there is a river in the canyon. Even the feelings that fall into this big space are "swept" away. In the municipal imagery of the song, "like garbage on the weekend." Instead of forming a line, they are brushed aside into the "avenues of angles."

So I'm wrong. The janitorial and bureaucratic imagery are metaphors for writing, but perhaps not songwriting. Maybe it's letter-writing between lovers. And it is so hard, it starts to feel like work.

She sees a problem, but she only has one tool to solve the problem-- her ability to assume another's perspective. She's going to empathize her way out of the problem she empathized her way into! That's like trying to dig out of a hole instead of climbing out, just because you have a shovel.

She should go back to her side. And instead of trying to guess what he's about, she should ask. And if he is not as voluble as her (he seems to lean on cliche), she should wait. And before she concludes that, yeah, fine, now she knows, she should make sure by asking again.

In trying to be both people in the relationship, she is making him feel left out. He keeps stepping back, once in a while dumping his feelings into the big-- and expanding-- gulf between them.

Unless she starts listening instead of talking for them both, the whole relationship is going to fall into the big space, and be swept away.


Next Song: Predictions