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(So apropos:
Saw death on a sunny snow)
Him:
"For every life..."
Her:
"Forgoe the parable."
Him:
"Seek the light."
Her:
"...My knees are cold."
(Running home, running home, running home, running home...)
Her:
"Go find another lover;
To bring a...to string along!"
"With all your lies,
You're still very lovable."
"I toured the light; so many foreign roads for Emma, forever ago."
Saw death on a sunny snow)
Him:
"For every life..."
Her:
"Forgoe the parable."
Him:
"Seek the light."
Her:
"...My knees are cold."
(Running home, running home, running home, running home...)
Her:
"Go find another lover;
To bring a...to string along!"
"With all your lies,
You're still very lovable."
"I toured the light; so many foreign roads for Emma, forever ago."
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Here is some background regarding his life that relates to this song.. After the break-up of his band De Yarmond Edison, Vernon retreated to his father's log cabin, out in the woods of north-east Wisconsin to hibernate for three snowy months. There he collected his thoughts and formulated them into a suite of songs. The album was originally self-released in late 2007 in a run of 500 copies and sold out instantly.
He mentions in an interview.. "One of the songs I wrote when I was at the cabin was 'For Emma.' There's a lyric in there where that says, 'I saw death on a sunny snow.' And it was very typical for a day up there in February. I remember there was a day before I left that it was minus 20F, but the sun was shining and it was sort of a brilliant contrast. Whenever I sing this song, or perform this song that's where I am. When I'm singing, 'Running home, running home,' it's sort of this repetitive thing that happens in the song. It's not as much about home, because I didn't know what home was at that point. That wasn't as established for me. My parents had a home. And I grew up at a home. But I was just running. These stories and this song all happen during the winter, because about February every year is when it gets really hard. And I think the starkness and the grayness and the lack of sun, and when the dirt and the salt sort of build up at the side of the roads, I think it's about time for the ground to start thawing and I think it's when people's hearts really start to give out. I think that's when you remember it the most."
The girl he wrote this song about's name wasn't actually Emma.. That was her middle name.. And the song isn't specific to her... He says "The record was me finally stopping a terrible, slow spin that had been building for years. Me alleviating memories, confronting a lot of lost love, longing and mediocrity."
Vernon explained to Uncut magazine June 2008 that the songs on the album are centered "around an ancient long-lost love." He added: "But, as happens in people's lives, old relationships often have plenty to do with new relationships as they come along. A lot of the album is about me trying to grow-up, about trying to grow into new love and failing at it. It's telling a story of one last relationship and how other ones collided with it."
hope this is helpful. I really enjoy this song. And I was interested in the meaning not only because my name is Emma also but because once I read the lyrics I became a bit puzzled myself on what it really meant.
This is when how he hurt her is revealed. According to her, he strung her along. She felt as if he just wanted her to himself but then he would go off and do whatever. "With all your lies, you're still very lovable" This shows that she still loves him and is drawn in by his redeeming qualities, despite how much he hid from her.
The last couple lines reveal the later regret of the boy, his understanding that he took her for granted, and his resolve to live his life in a way she would be proud of.
That is what this song means to me: To Emma.
I agree in a broad respect with most people on here, who say that this song centres around a break-up between a boy and a girl (probably teenage, who knows). However I do not think it is so specifically about the break-up process itself, rather what came before it and, of course, after it.
The song is on the surface quite obscure, and the lyrics seem to indicate loss, yet musically it is quite upbeat. The tight strumming of the guitar sets a fairly high pace, and the high-pitched singing (a standard for the album) lends a somewhat lighter feel to the scene that is set. Just my take.
The song begins with a narrator saying ‘So apropos: saw death on a sunny snow’. This I think reveals a certain humour in the writer. ‘So apropos’ basically means ‘so, by the way’, and not ‘it’s so appropriate’ like some people on here seem to think. Anyway, he goes on to basically say ‘So anyway: saw death on a sunny snow’. This ‘death’ is both the writer indicating the death of his relationship with the girl in the song, but also his likening of the break-up to death, which I think most people can sympathize with; breaking up with your first girlfriend or the first person you really care about is never easy, and can to a young person feel like ‘death’ at the time. Yet, this moment of ‘death’ is handled in a very casual way, with the scene being introduced with a simple ‘So apropos’, or ‘so by the way’. It’s a mystery what this topic is ‘apropos’ of/to, but we can assume it was a similar subject to this song itself (maybe the preceding parts of the album? It would not surprise me if that were the case and the album had in a way been leading to this moment- this is effectively the title track after all). Yet despite all this, the use of ‘apropos’ as an introduction from a narrator watching the scene unfold shows the writer making light of this situation which so long ago seemed like ‘death’, thus indicating a mellowing of his feelings about the event. The part about the sunny snow I think can literally be attributed to the setting for this break-up- a sunny winter’s day in the northern United States. Perhaps it’s figurative, but in this song it appears to me to be quite literal. Why wouldn’t a young boyfriend and girlfriend go for a walk in the snow together?
Moving on. These next few lines are without doubt the hardest for me to interpret. The male character (the singer, I suppose) says ‘For every life…’, and the female character (his girl) responds with ‘Forego the parable’. He says ‘Seek the light’, and she responds with ‘My knees are cold’. The segment ends with a voice, almost in the background, repeating ‘Running home, running home, running home, running home’. There are a couple of possible interpretations here, but I think the most likely is something that people seem to have hit upon on this forum. Essentially, he is saying these highfalutin sentences such as ‘For every life’ and ‘Seek the light’, but his girl doesn’t want to hear about these things, because she just doesn’t think that way, since she is more of a ‘normal’ teenager/person. He, as an intelligent teenage boy (and budding musician, assuming this song is autobiographical), is speaking in a rather flimsy manner about subjects which he does not yet grasp fully (life, seeking the light), and it is driving away this girl he is with, whom he truly does care about but cannot find enough in common with. When she utters ‘Forego the parable’, I see this as the writer again poking fun at himself by paraphrasing in a very sophisticated way what the girl must have been saying to him in response to his attempts at high-brow conversation (really, she probably said ‘what the heck are you talking about’ or suchlike). Her next retort ‘My knees are cold’ sees her again bringing the conversation back from a lofty topic (‘Seek the light’) to something more relevant to her; the fact that her knees are cold in this wintry setting. In a very teenage way, the two do not have the bravery or social skill yet to speak openly about what they’re thinking, so the conversation splutters along in this manner.
The ‘Running home, running home, running home, running home’ line demonstrates to us a further sample of what the writer has been showing us for the entire lyric so far: snapshots of his relationship; he tries to converse with the girl, but it doesn’t chime that well with her; running home is a memory he has of running back to his home most likely from his girlfriend’s house, or another meeting spot he might have arranged with her. Since it is cold here, it is better to run, and that running home with adrenaline and happiness coursing through him is a memory that he cherishes in itself.
The next couple of lines are also a little tricky. The girl says ‘Go find another lover…to bring a-…to string a-long’. Perhaps the boy is having trouble getting up the courage to sleep with the girl (it happens), or maybe he is too shy to commit to her and be a proper ‘boyfriend’, embarrassed about what his friends at school might say about her or their relationship (again, happens). Therefore she feels fed up with his fancy words that have no emotional follow-through, so she tells him to go find another girlfriend to string along. Given that this is all written for the perspective of (again, we assume) the boy, these couple of lines show him being rather harsh with himself. Though young boys are bound to get nervous and lack confidence with girls in the way he appears to be doing, he is demonstrating the girl’s frustration with him by using words harsher than what she may have actually said at the time. The writer seems mad with himself for wasting his chance, but that madness is diluted with the next line…
‘With all your lies…you’re still very lovable’ utters the girl. Here, the girl gives the writer a break (really the writer giving himself a break, thanks to him mellowing out over time), stating that despite all his aimless, complicated thoughts and speeches from earlier in the song (which she equates to lies, since she could not understand them), he is still a lovable guy. This leaves us with both a positive impression of the girl and the boy, indicating that despite there being no question he messed things up with her back then, there is also some redemption in the fact that she saw beyond his teenage bullshit and saw the good guy inside.
The final verses of lyric wrap up the affair described previously. The boy states ‘I toured the light…So many foreign roads…For Emma, forever ago’. His proclamation that he has ‘toured the light’ tells us that he has tried his best to make himself a better person, a better partner, as he has grown up, learning from this relationship with the girl early in life. This journey across ‘the light’ has taken him down ‘so many foreign roads’ i.e. ways of thinking and behaving which he had not previously considered as a teenager, and beyond that age, going down many roads, thinking in many different ways about the way he treats other people, the way he portrays himself with is words and actions, up to this current point (where he is now singing about the journey so far). He dedicates this effort to ‘Emma’, which we can safely presume is the name of the girl in this song, and states that she comes from a time which feels like ‘forever ago’ because so much has changed in his life that she, and his old life as an insecure teenager in the freezing snow seems like another world to his current one.
The song then plays out in a manner which is almost triumphant, reinforcing my feeling that this, while wistful and nostalgic, is not intended as a depressing or sad song. The slide guitar initially increases subtly in volume, emphasising the past, and the unchangeable sorrow that can go with it, but is taken over by what sounds like trumpets or some other brass instrument. The trumpets arpeggio upwards, portraying to us the musical equivalent of a sunrise, or a victory won before fading slowly away, the ultimate message being that although there was a girl that this boy cared deeply about long ago, whom he lost due to his inexperience and insecurity, that loss has helped him to become a better person through learning, and for that he is grateful.
Sorry that that analysis was so long, it’s just a very interesting song to me…
Interesting and well written analysis. No need to apologize for the length (although we do seem to live in a world of attention spans which can only grasp 140 characters)
So apropos:
Saw death on a sunny snow
he means it's so fitting that hew saw death on a sunny day in the snow. alluding to something bad happening
Him:
"For every life..."
he's telling the girl like well there's just times when and well you know there's just this and that. we all know the usual lines.
Her:
"Forego the parable."
she's telling him whatever just say it. no need for a story (parable is a short story with truth) basically don't beat around the bush.
Him:
"Seek the light."
He wants her to just know the truth.
Her:
"My knees are cold"
She's distracted and just like well i'm not gonna bother.
Her:
"Go find another lover;
To bring a... to string along!"
"With all your lies,
You're still very lovable."
the top is self explanatory of course.
and even though he lies and hurts her, she grows fonder and fonder of him each time he does.
As people have already said, in cold Midwestern winters you get the sun and it is below zero. But I think the death part is the fact that you look out your window in the winter and there are no leaves on trees, the grass is dead (and buried under snow) it is just all white everywhere.