The Classic Crime – Gravedigging

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  My Interpretation:I think topherc3103 and yeahthatgirl are on the right track. Here's my interpretation:
  
  "I've been sitting...headlights": A suicide lane is a lane inbetween two other lanes that allows vehicles in those two outside lanes to turn left without blocking traffic. You're not supposed to drive in them for any length of time, as they are just for turning left. So, it sounds like he wants to turn away from something. He is waiting for someone to give him a signal that he can (or should?) turn (when a car flashes its lights, the person is saying you can go).
  
  In the next stanza, it sounds like he has been struggling with whether or not to turn and make that change in his life. He has finally reached the moment where he is ready to do it though.
  
  In the third stanza, he is saying that he is ready to lay to rest his old ways. Star-crossed is indeed from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", and means that something was destined to happen. So I think the speaker is saying that turning from his old ways was meant to be.
  
  So overall, I think the song is about making the decision to change one's life in some way.

  Flag fireToSteel0423on October 03, 2009   Link

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  General Comment:RavenGrip you are right on.
  I know a man, he once was
  a friend, and he would feel
  the exact same way you do.
  
  I think he is trying to "kill"
  all that is sick, twisted and
  wrong about himself and he
  wants to start over.

  Flag baraboomon September 22, 2009   Link

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  General Comment:There's no doubt that this song is about a form of suicide. It gives mention to suicidal/witchcrafty rites such as "waiting for the planets to align" and "digging my star-crossed grave," but then, it also gives more typical but still somewhat hidden references to suicide "hang my head above the mantlepiece tonight," "looking for a sign in the headlights" (compare this to TCC song "Headlights" from Albatross, he uses the same imagery to talk about suicide,) "sitting by the train-tracks," and, of course, "poison pills."
  It's not about physical suicide, though, because needless to say, Matt MacDonald is still alive and this song is full of a passion that is not by any means staged. This song is a continuation of the first two Silver Cord songs, "The End" and "Just a Man" in which he talks about having lived a lie as a religious icon. But now he's ready to let that icon die, to start a new life. Such a process is painful and dark, like real suicide, but it is infinitely more worthwhile. Those who commit physical suicide are really looking for this spiritual form of suicide, although they may not know it.
  TCC is not a Christian band, but Matt is a Christian and he sings and writes all the songs, and it shows. So I don't hink I'm out of line by saying that we can compare this to the idea of baptism. That is, dying with Christ and putting our old selves behind, then being raised from the water in order to live a new life for God. As Christians we make it a kind of a trivial ceremony, but Matt puts forth the real spirit of what I think it is intended to be. It's a kind of dark reality to have died to yourself and determined to start over.

  Flag RavenGripon September 21, 2009   Link

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  General Comment:Well I always thought about this as a bit more hopeful than the whole suicide theme most people are getting from it...
  I took
  "I've been sitting by the train tracks near the backdoor of my mind (of my mind),
  waiting for the planets to align."
  
  to mean that he's sick of the way his mind works, and wants his old way of doing things to just die....
  
  "Well, I've been to war with my mind,
  but things will be different this time.
  I won't be putting up a fight."
  
  and that this time around he isn't going to fight back against a change.
  
  just my thoughts :)

  Flag straitbladeon January 10, 2009   Link

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  General Comment:I think this song also has to do with us as a society being too focused on the end of the world when it mentions things such as, "waiting for the planets to align" i think its basically saying the more we worry about the end we're just digging ourselves a bigger grave.

  Flag eric91on October 23, 2008   Link

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  General Comment:Hey this song can be looked at anyway, anyone want to look at it.
  
  But Matt has already said what the lyrics are about. and they have nothin to do with God or Satanic stuff.

  Flag skaterpunkrockeron October 06, 2008   Link

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  General Comment:What about the witchcraft angle? Why does he say starcorssed grave? I believe that a crossed star is a wickan symbol, the witches religion. And then he mentions the planet align, which sounds like something in astrology which is practiced by witches. Perhaps these two thought about witches is more than mere coincidence. He might be talking about the occults and evil religions we get ourselves into our killing us. Which is absolutly true. When someone gets into a religion he is blinded by it and given a false sense our safety, when in fact he is still a sinner and head for hell and the eternal death. This could be how we are killing ourselves. Whether or not it's what the song meant, the idea remains true. REligion and cults blind us from what we need to know, that simple faith in Jesus work on the cross can give us eternal life and a place in heaven. Jesus paid for our sin! We just need to accept his gift and stop killing ourselves with falsehoods!

  Flag DanJackieChanon September 25, 2008   Link

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    0

    I think the "star-crossed" is actually a reference to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In the play they are referred to as "star-crossed lovers". They also commit suicide, which fits the suicide imagery of the song.
    
    But yeah, any time I hear "star-crossed" I immediately think "Romeo and Juliet", and since it's probably the most popular play in the English language, they may have expected people to pick up on the reference. Just a thought.
    
    (As a side note, there is actually a LOT of religious imagery used in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet "new baptized", etc. If you read the scene with the idea of Juliet as the Christ figure It's really amazing. I don't even really like the play--I had to read it for school--but after reading that scene in this way, it made me appreciate it a bit more.)

    Flag Free2Feelon January 16, 2009  
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  General Comment:i feel like he's been living a hypocritical life thats on the road to death...and "waiting for the planets to align" for everything to make sense and be right and fixed on its own. but he knows he cant live waiting for a change that wont come without him taking the iniative...dying to himself to his old life, and handing it over to God to be changed

  Flag yeahthatgirlon August 06, 2008   Link

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  General Comment:ya i was just sayin that she or he knows that the band isn't christian, but she or he can think what wants to think about what the song means to to him or her. I have seen people say religous things about Scary Kids Scarings Kids, or Change Of Pace, and Fall out Boy and those bands aren't christian.

  Flag skaterpunkrockeron August 02, 2008   Link

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  General Comment:the band isn't "Christian"... that's just a label. But that doesn't mean that members of the band aren't Christians, and that religious themes aren't reflected in their music... it's nice that you didn't totally bash sonicemerald for interpreting the song the way that he sees it though, skater...
  
  Personally, I think this song is about letting himself and his way of thinking die...
  "no longer living a lie"
  I don't think that's saying that he wants to physically die, but that he wants his lifestyle, and his way of living to die... letting die the part of him that is a lie, so that a true, meaningful life can be born.

  Flag topherc3103on July 31, 2008   Link

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