The band's website gives the last word of line 7 as "sea," not "scene." Subsequent lines are: "Tie me to dream," not "Time in a dream." and "Iʼm tied to the wait and sees," not "Iʼm tired of the wait and sees."
This song is a tough one to crack. It is clearly about someone considering a decision. It is repeatedly unclear which lines are metaphors and which are concrete. It is repeatedly unclear when a pair of consecutive lines refer to the same idea, expressed twice, or when the second line refers to a contrasting idea. It is several times unclear when a quotation ends.
But it is clear that it is about reaching a decision between two possible choices for what the singer will do next in his life. One involves staying in his present circumstance and the other involves moving to another one. One involves a love of the unnamed second person; by implication, the other means rejecting that love. So the question is, is the song about (1) staying with a love affair (or platonic love) vs. leaving to explore other options, or is the song about (2) staying in some solitary situation in life vs. leaving it to explore love? I think the evidence, such as it is, points towards (1), but the aforementioned ambiguity makes it hard to be certain. The title may be the best evidence we have: “At Least It Was Here” – itself quite the vague phrase! – seems to say, after a phase in someone’s life has ended, that though it did end (past tense “was”) there was a bright side (“at least”) to it having happened. That would make more sense if the love was the thing in the past, and the title is saying, well, at least it is good that there was a love, before it ended. So my reading is that this is about a man who has decided to leave a relationship and is going on to try new things in life.
All of that said, I find myself toying with a very specific interpretation that makes sense of some of the very unusual references to rope (four!) and the sea, and as far as I can tell, this reading is original to me: Is this song about The Odyssey?!?
In Homer’s Odyssey, a man spends ten years returning home after the Trojan War, The trip is made primarily by sea. He is delayed by many obstacles put in his way by Poseidon, including three times when female figures seduce him, to try to: He spends one year on land as the lover of Circe; he sails by the Sirens, whose songs would draw his ship to doom if he could not resist; he then spends seven years on land as the lover of Calypso before choosing to leave and return home to his wife, Penelope. The Odyssey has far more situations in it than this song could possibly contain, but it may refer to two or three of them:
1) Give me your hands Show me the door I cannot stand To wait anymore
With Circe for a year, Odysseus tires of waiting and decides to leave. (Alternately, this could refer to his time with Calypso, but there are more lines indicative of Circe.)
2) Somebody said Be what you'll be
Hermes delivers a message to Odysseus, telling him how to avoid being turned into an animal by Circe. “Be what you’ll be.” Hermes would be the “someone.”
3) We could be old and cold and dead on the sea
If Odysseus and his men stay, they could grow old until they die in the seaside of Aeaea, Circe’s home.
4) But I love you more than words can say
Odysseus’s love for Penelope compels him to move on and leave.
5) I can’t count the reasons I should stay
There are no reasons to stay with Circe, so he leaves.
The next lines seem to describe Odysseus’s predicament with the Sirens, and how he resolves it, by having his men physically tie him to a mast on the ship so that he is unable to steer the ship towards them.
6) Give me some rope Tie me to dream
Odysseus orders his men to tie him to the mast so that, while he hears the dream song of the Sirens, he cannot be driven to act on it.
7) Give me the hope to run out of steam
By being tied to the mast, the energy he would use to make the wrong decision is spent uselessly and harmlessly in a struggle against the ropes; his will to do the wrong thing runs out of steam.
8) Somebody said it can be here
Hermes visits Odysseus twice in the Odyssey; the second time, it is to recommend that Odysseus leave Calypso to return home by sea. “Somebody said,” both times, may refer to Hermes delivering messages.
9) We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year
To be honest, this one line is where the Odyssey interpretation may fall apart; it may refer to the year he spends with Circe, but the “rope” reference which is literal with the Sirens would be metaphorical here, and this seems to be out of sequence with all of the other passages, which otherwise match the Odyssey quite nicely.
10) I can't count the reasons I should stay One by one they all just fade away
Just as before with Circe, he finds that he has no real reason to stay with Calypso.
11)
Iʼm tied to the wait and sees
Iʼm tired of that part of me
That makes up a perfect lie
To keep us between
But hours turn into days
So watch what you throw away
And be here to recognize
Thereʼs another way
“Tied” appears again as the fifth reference to rope. This may summarize Odysseus’s time spent with Calypso, where waiting and seeing binds him to a “lie” – this is not where he belongs, and though a great deal of time passes (seven years), he eventually recognizes that there is another way, and escapes by sea to end up back home.
It would be somewhat appropriate if the title song for a TV series about college had such a literary inspiration. The extremely specific references to rope, the sea, and leaving behind love seem to work very well at times, but I’ll admit that I suspect that this is probably just clever pattern-matching and that the band, if they read this, would have a laugh or an eye-roll. If they intended no specific reference to the Odyssey, however, I think that nonetheless, the song captures the same general circumstance of Odysseus: A man is in a long-lasting love that is keeping him from moving on in life, but in time, after someone’s words prompt him to do so, he decides to move on.
The band's website gives the last word of line 7 as "sea," not "scene." Subsequent lines are: "Tie me to dream," not "Time in a dream." and "Iʼm tied to the wait and sees," not "Iʼm tired of the wait and sees."
This song is a tough one to crack. It is clearly about someone considering a decision. It is repeatedly unclear which lines are metaphors and which are concrete. It is repeatedly unclear when a pair of consecutive lines refer to the same idea, expressed twice, or when the second line refers to a contrasting idea. It is several times unclear when a quotation ends.
But it is clear that it is about reaching a decision between two possible choices for what the singer will do next in his life. One involves staying in his present circumstance and the other involves moving to another one. One involves a love of the unnamed second person; by implication, the other means rejecting that love. So the question is, is the song about (1) staying with a love affair (or platonic love) vs. leaving to explore other options, or is the song about (2) staying in some solitary situation in life vs. leaving it to explore love? I think the evidence, such as it is, points towards (1), but the aforementioned ambiguity makes it hard to be certain. The title may be the best evidence we have: “At Least It Was Here” – itself quite the vague phrase! – seems to say, after a phase in someone’s life has ended, that though it did end (past tense “was”) there was a bright side (“at least”) to it having happened. That would make more sense if the love was the thing in the past, and the title is saying, well, at least it is good that there was a love, before it ended. So my reading is that this is about a man who has decided to leave a relationship and is going on to try new things in life.
All of that said, I find myself toying with a very specific interpretation that makes sense of some of the very unusual references to rope (four!) and the sea, and as far as I can tell, this reading is original to me: Is this song about The Odyssey?!?
In Homer’s Odyssey, a man spends ten years returning home after the Trojan War, The trip is made primarily by sea. He is delayed by many obstacles put in his way by Poseidon, including three times when female figures seduce him, to try to: He spends one year on land as the lover of Circe; he sails by the Sirens, whose songs would draw his ship to doom if he could not resist; he then spends seven years on land as the lover of Calypso before choosing to leave and return home to his wife, Penelope. The Odyssey has far more situations in it than this song could possibly contain, but it may refer to two or three of them:
1) Give me your hands Show me the door I cannot stand To wait anymore
With Circe for a year, Odysseus tires of waiting and decides to leave. (Alternately, this could refer to his time with Calypso, but there are more lines indicative of Circe.)
2) Somebody said Be what you'll be
Hermes delivers a message to Odysseus, telling him how to avoid being turned into an animal by Circe. “Be what you’ll be.” Hermes would be the “someone.”
3) We could be old and cold and dead on the sea
If Odysseus and his men stay, they could grow old until they die in the seaside of Aeaea, Circe’s home.
4) But I love you more than words can say
Odysseus’s love for Penelope compels him to move on and leave.
5) I can’t count the reasons I should stay
There are no reasons to stay with Circe, so he leaves.
The next lines seem to describe Odysseus’s predicament with the Sirens, and how he resolves it, by having his men physically tie him to a mast on the ship so that he is unable to steer the ship towards them.
6) Give me some rope Tie me to dream
Odysseus orders his men to tie him to the mast so that, while he hears the dream song of the Sirens, he cannot be driven to act on it.
7) Give me the hope to run out of steam
By being tied to the mast, the energy he would use to make the wrong decision is spent uselessly and harmlessly in a struggle against the ropes; his will to do the wrong thing runs out of steam.
8) Somebody said it can be here
Hermes visits Odysseus twice in the Odyssey; the second time, it is to recommend that Odysseus leave Calypso to return home by sea. “Somebody said,” both times, may refer to Hermes delivering messages.
9) We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year
To be honest, this one line is where the Odyssey interpretation may fall apart; it may refer to the year he spends with Circe, but the “rope” reference which is literal with the Sirens would be metaphorical here, and this seems to be out of sequence with all of the other passages, which otherwise match the Odyssey quite nicely.
10) I can't count the reasons I should stay One by one they all just fade away
Just as before with Circe, he finds that he has no real reason to stay with Calypso.
11)
Iʼm tied to the wait and sees Iʼm tired of that part of me That makes up a perfect lie To keep us between But hours turn into days So watch what you throw away And be here to recognize Thereʼs another way
“Tied” appears again as the fifth reference to rope. This may summarize Odysseus’s time spent with Calypso, where waiting and seeing binds him to a “lie” – this is not where he belongs, and though a great deal of time passes (seven years), he eventually recognizes that there is another way, and escapes by sea to end up back home.
It would be somewhat appropriate if the title song for a TV series about college had such a literary inspiration. The extremely specific references to rope, the sea, and leaving behind love seem to work very well at times, but I’ll admit that I suspect that this is probably just clever pattern-matching and that the band, if they read this, would have a laugh or an eye-roll. If they intended no specific reference to the Odyssey, however, I think that nonetheless, the song captures the same general circumstance of Odysseus: A man is in a long-lasting love that is keeping him from moving on in life, but in time, after someone’s words prompt him to do so, he decides to move on.