Evaporated

dude, this is the first song ever put up on thios site <u>ever</u>!! Wow... yeah, I know no one cares XD

You know the songs that you can hear for years and they can still hit you like some sort of revelation when you listen to them? like this one. That makes you register a songmeanings.net account, hehe.

Somebody said, in one of the first posted comments, that they couldn't say they related the lyrics because it would be ungrateful for them to complain about their life; I can identify with that feeling but I don't think it can be applied to this song. Because it's not about life, not about the hand he's been dealt or anything he's been put through or any relationship/situation...it's just about him. looking at himself. When time has just slipped away and he's been living in a blur, a dreamworld; not really keeping himself in check or control but going with the flow of routines and habits and swept in crowds and then when you wake up from a heavy night before and that night might have just as well been the past few years. Or pretty much your whole life. and you just start to wonder where the hell all that time went and how you got where you are. and wish that you cared, that things meant something to you, things that would have once upon a time. and that you were and had been appreciating life as it passed. but it seems too late. that you've gone too far to come back and done irrepairable damage. and also noticing how comparable you are to your parent now you've blinked and missed a trick and suddenly you're a grown up and forgot to keep your wits about you and make sure you take the right off-turnings to make sure that you didn’t. it's completely summed up in the last line - "Oh god, what have I done?", but I would never say elaborating on it with the rest of the song was unnecessary. nononononono no never!

It's pretty sad to be able to say that I feel the way he describes at 20 years old (and not just of late, either) but i'm sure I'm not the only one there. I’d be tempted to say I bet maybe everyone will feel like this at least once, unfortunately. It is an outstanding song, I agree it deserves to get a look in for anyone who thinks Brick is as good as Ben Folds Five get. just to mention a few lines...

"woke up way too late" – not just emerging from a drunken slumber too late in the day, I don’t think, coming round to his senses and looking around and questioning where he is too late in life.

“what I’ve kept with me and what I’ve thrown away” – thoughts that have been with me a lot at the moment, I’m just scraping through the last bit of a fairly disastrous (but all experience is good experience of course!) college course and my tutor said some pretty thought-provoking things to me when I tried to throw the towel in a few weeks ago – about covering up tracks after you where you go, and that people shouldn’t, it’s important to see where you’ve been to understand how you got where you are. Which isn’t a point of view I can share, I’m desperate to obliterate a lot of history, but I can sort of see what he means – people grow and they change and they move out of a room and look at their old belongings and memories, and throw away what seems silly or embarrassing or just not important enough to be cluttering up your life when you want to move free ‘n’ easy…but one day you’re almost bound to want to remember something and wish you hadn’t got rid of every souvenir that could have allowed you too. Which adds to the waking up one day an adult and not really understanding how it happened.

“Blind man at a canyon's edge of a panoramic scene” - the world is impressive. It’s beautiful. It’s marvellous, it’s breathtaking. But if you’re feeling as utterly detached and displaced as this song describes, it’s very difficult to actually appreciate it, even though you know that it deserves recognition, and that is would-be frustrating. You’re not sure when you stopped paying attention to the world around you, but it’s escaping you and then it feels you don’t deserve to be in it.

Sorry to go on so long, please understand I’m fundamentally incapable of explaining things in short! Hope that’s rung some bells with anybody who’s interested tho, as if the song itself didn’t sounds clearly enough. Absolute stunner from Mr Folds here, I can’t thank him more.

This is going to sound incredibly stupid but this song has kind of changed my outlook on life. Over the last year I've sunk into a state of melancholia, and all that I cared about, all that I was once passionate about, I've given up and I've just fallen by the wayside. I'm a shadow of my former myself, and I hate it because I've got no reason to be, but I don't know what I've done and how to get myself back. Once I was walking along the street wallowing in my own self pity, feeling quasi-suicidal (but I don't have enough conviction to go through with that, anyway) and this song came on shuffle. I'd never really listened to it before. I burst out in tears, listened to it on repeat about 10 times. Then it hit me - I can identify completely with this song. At age 15.

I realised that it's ridiculous to feel that way at my age, so I've slowly started rebuilding my life... it's not easy, and I don't even know what to do... but there's always that hope.

This is my favorite song on Whatever and Ever Amen, and one of my favorite songs ever written.

Blind man at a canyon's edge Of a panoramic scene Or maybe I'm a kite that's flying high and random Dangling a string Or slumped over in a vacant room Head on a stranger's knee I'm sure back home they think I've lost my mind

I love the emotion of the final verse. It gives me chills.

p.s. I also noticed this is the first lyric submitted on this website.

i listened to thins song everynight before i went to bed and it made me feel so....so something. it became one of my all time favorite songs and when ben came out for his encore and played it, i had to hold back tears. it means so much to me.

you have to feel something when you hear this, i agree.

and no it's not 'so emo'. ben's not whining to get chicks in this song.

Great song. Sends chills every time I listen.

There's a lyric missing here - "Started thinking about my old man/ IT SEEMS THAT ALL MEN/ WELL THEY GET INTO A CAR and go/ anywhere"

Which is so true. I remember my dad just driving off when he was a in a mood. And I got bored once and just drove around. It's a man thing!

Universal themes - you can't go wrong.

In a story similar to ilikefruchocs, I first heard this song for the first time while taking a shower and listening to my ipod on a night last spring when I was very depressed and disappointed in myself. I didn't know what song it was but I recognized Ben Folds' voice and went downstairs and spent half an hour listening to Ben Folds songs on my computer until I found this one, the last one I clicked on. It meant more to me then than any song had ever meant before and it is still one of my favorite songs. It is also the first song I ever performed by myself when I played and sang it for a talent show this fall at my high school. It is so simple and yet so beautiful because of all the emotion that Ben Folds put into it. Although he wrote it about his dad, I think it can apply to anyone who is depressed and disappointed in themselves. I know Ben Folds will never read this but if for some reason he does, I want to tell him thanks for being there for me.

I think this song really does give off the feeling of loss. It came on when I was thinking about a loss and it was the perfect song for how I was feeling. There is definitely a lot of genuine emotion in this song.

Here it is 23 years after this album was released and I'm holding back tears on this song.

It really hits home. For 10 years I was on a path of destruction. Didn't care about anyone and drugs were my priority. Now iv been married for 3 years with a beautiful 1-year-old boy and I can't imagine my life without them.

Even two decades later, this song hits you right in the feels!